Be an Employer of Choice…
Recognition of Your Work Boosts Morale and Attracts Quality Applicants
There are many principles that underpin becoming known as an “Employer of Choice.” Creating meaningful and personalized employee experiences and being a company known for authenticity are certainly two of them.
Your ability to evoke enthusiasm and pride in the hearts and minds of multiple audiences emanates from both and will enable you to truly build reputation and awareness to retain and attract your employees and potential employees. A big source of employee pride often comes from the quality of the work, the opportunity for individual recognition, and the company being recognized and applauded by others as among the best.
Every year since 2006, IECRM has held a prestigious awards ceremony to recognize The Best in the Industry. This year, the 14th Annual Summit Awards Banquet will be held at an exciting new venue worthy of celebrating your best projects, people, and initiatives.
The Summit Awards “Call for Nominations” is now open and it’s not too soon to be thinking about your entries. If you love what you do and are proud of your work, this awards competition is one you will want to enter.
The deadline for this year’s entries is Tuesday, March 31st. These prestigious awards recognize IECRM member excellence in the Energy, Electrical, and Green building fields for projects that were completed between March 1, 2019, and March 31, 2020. Plan on the best Summit Awards Celebration ever on Thursday, April 23, 2020.
Why enter the Summit Awards? Why enter awards at all?
Awards…
- Demonstrate your amazing talents and skills to the rest of the electrical contracting and construction sectors.
- Raise your company’s profile and provide the opportunity for you to gain positive PR.
- Help you earn a place and a ranking in your business.
- Cut through the clutter of competing information in the marketplace and provide you with a point of difference.
- Differentiate your company.
- Provide staff with the kind of morale boost that comes from beating the competition and basking in the spotlight of your industry.
- Help attract new business.
The IECRM Summit Awards are presented at a premier industry event and represent an unparalleled opportunity to celebrate the work of your employees. You can enter more than one category as long as the work is relevant.
Questions about nominating your company or a colleague for an award? Never submitted before but want to this year? Contact IECRM CEO Marilyn Akers Stansbury at [email protected] or 303.853.4886.
Checklist for a winning Summit Awards submission:
- Understand and articulate “why”: What about your submission has had the most relevant impact, solved a problem or achieved a specific goal i.e. more environmentally efficient, more productive energy usage, a design and construction that had to accommodate what? Make this what you lead with when you start describing your work. Why did you do what you did? Why did you believe you would be the best match for the project? Why is it significant? What is its impact?
- Have a plan of attack: It’s a really good idea to do a draft beforehand, work out to the word count if there is one, and allow enough time.
- Be sure your response actually answers the question: This means addressing specified criteria and making responses relevant to the question being asked. Also, provide a unique response for each question rather than cutting and pasting the same one for each.
- Be clear. Be succinct. Don’t waffle: Some judges prefer information presented in bullet points; others prefer long-form. But whichever you use, the information needs to be easily accessible. Perhaps you can use a mix of both.
- Write with confidence: It may seem obvious but being hesitant or uncertain within an awards submission is not a great look when you are vying to be named the best in the category. At the same time be authentic, yet humble.
- Provide evidence: A great statement is one thing, but taking the extra step to provide supporting evidence or metrics to back up your claims goes a long way. It comes down to relevance. Give context and pinpoint relevance.
- Include facts and figures: Tying financial impacts to a particular strategy or decision made does prove your success. Don’t rely solely on numbers, however.
- Provide feedback from outsiders: What have third parties said about your work. Provide information and testimonials from the customer or an inspector…allow them to say about you what you legitimately could not credibly say about yourself. This will further distinguish your entry.
- Don’t make assumptions: Never assume that the judges are going to do additional research about your entry. Make sure that you are very clear as to what makes you worthy of the award.
- Use spell check and be consistent: typos and grammar errors do not instill confidence in the words in the entry. Make sure that the facts you use are consistent and reliable.
- Make it fun and enjoyable: Sometimes there are a number of submissions to reach, so make yours stand out. Establish a connection with the judges with something they are going to remember.