Process of Nominating Employees for Awards

Motivated employees are the main assets of a company. However, repeated work routines can eventually bring about boredom in the employees. Eventually, the employees may lose the motivation that they previously had. In order to keep the employees happy and motivated, acknowledging their accomplishments is very crucial. An employee awards program can be very rewarding in this regard. However, arranging an employee awards program can be tricky. Just about anything can go wrong if it’s not planned well. Also, if your organization is a large corporation, it may face some problems while nominating employees for awards. Today we are going to provide some insight on how to nominate an employee for an award. Stay tuned to know the entire process.

Nominating the Candidate for an Award

Nominating an employee for an award depends on the recognition program of your institution. The whole nomination process comes after that. So here are four steps to determine your nominees.

Step 1: Determining the Award Categories

This is where you determine why you are nominating your employee for a trophy award. The award can be given to recognize the employee’s professional career expertise—for example, the employee of the month or the employee of the year category. On the other hand, you can recognize an employee for his humor or contribution to making the workload bearable—for example, the best office prankster or the office joker. Make sure that your awards category encourages other employees to focus on their productivity. Also, some fun employee awards will keep it entertaining. Only concentrating on work-related awards may not promote a healthy work environment. So, determine the categories and also include some “miscellaneous award categories” to make the thing easy to customize.

Step 2: Collecting Nominations

In this step, you collect nominations for the categories you decided on in step 1. If you run a small organization, you already have an idea of the accomplishments of your employee. However, when the number of employees increases, it can be hard to keep track. In the latter case, you can collect nominations via a form submission or email.

Google Forms or Survey Monkey allows you to create automated nomination forms. If you choose to collect nominations via email, it will need more manual work. If you are collecting nominations via forms, you can add some silly questions as well. It will allow you to choose the award according to the employee’s taste. This slight personalization can come in very handy. Also, make sure to collect the nominee’s name, reasons for submission, and the nominator’s name. When you perform this step, you already have few names to consider for the particular awards.

Step 3: Determining the Finalists

Upon receiving the names of the nominees, you start your evaluation process. For small companies, all the nominees can be finalists. However, for larger organizations, this part is tricky. First, consider the names that came repeatedly. Then, find out their accomplishments. Also, consider the endorsement of their co-workers. After that, you can narrow it down to 3 to 5 names of potential winners. Now, you will need to choose your winner. You can determine the winners in one of the four ways:

  • Picked by a significant person: This is the quickest way to pick your winner. Either the CEO or any prominent management team member chooses the winner of a certain category in this process.
  • Create a panel: This is more of a democratic way. You can ask a group of people from different departments to choose a winner. The planning committee can take responsibility as well. Keeping an odd number of people in the panel can work best to avoid ties.
  • Apply a Rubric: Create a rubric to make the award more objective. It can easily show who deserves the award more.
  • Choose randomly: If you have one too many finalists, you can narrow it down by choosing randomly. Although, it’s neither democratic nor objective.

Whichever method you choose, make sure to inform the nominators and the nominees of the process. This will make sure there isn’t any confusion.

Step 4: Announce the Finalists

Creating a buzz for the award can be productive in many ways. The easiest way to create this buzz can be declaring the finalists before the awards. You can declare the finalists via email or the company forum. It will create anticipation and make your employees look forward to the award days. You can also use monthly newsletters, breakroom televisions, corporate memos to announce the finalists.

Activities After Choosing the Finalists

You have chosen your finalists. Now you will need to pick the winner and deliver the award. So, how do you go about doing that? First, pick the winner among your finalists. You can choose any method you use to pick the finalists. Selected by panel lets you be impartial, and the panel can choose the most deserving candidate. It may take a little bit of time, but the outcome is concrete. The panel can also share one or two lines before delivering the award to the winner for dramatic effect. After picking the winner, it’s time to announce. You can use any of the previous methods you used to declare the finalists. Also, you can throw a small ceremony to acknowledge the great works done by the employee. It will give everyone a sense of participation. All that is left is to award the winner. You don’t need to spend a ton of money on the awards. The award can be a crest or award certificate with their names engraved on it. Small gift boxes, extra vacation days, and gift certificates can also work. After giving away the awards, you should spread the word. A statement in the company forum with the accomplishments of the award winners will do the job. You can also announce it through the breakroom TVs or give them shoutouts on your company’s social media page.

Final Words

Giving awards to the employees indicates the gratitude from the company to its hard-working employees. Making it memorable will encourage them to keep up the good work and inspire others to do the same. Being impartial while choosing the nominees can go a long way. It will also allow the company to recognize their best employees and can utilize them properly in the future.