Every noteworthy organization gets recognized for its work locally or internationally and is keen to proudly display the awards won. The objectives primarily are to instill pride among employees, delight prospective clients and improve awareness about the organization’s great work and wins. However, organizations struggle with creating the right experience when it comes to implementing a production, placement and promotion of an awards showcase.
Here are some top tips to build and sustain interest among stakeholders.
Craft your objectives carefully:  Do you want to inspire your employees? Does your staff ‘get’ the impact of the work your organization does? Do they know the value of the awards you win? Are they proud of what you have achieved? Do you expect your prospective customers or current clients to consider giving your organization more work due to the slew of awards you won? Write up what you want to deliver with your award showcase.
Getting started: List and categorize the awards your organization has won. Identify the space you can display the showcase. Think of the experience you want to create. Can you use the reception areas for this activity? Is there a space frequented by your employees that can be utilized?
Decide what makes sense: If you have the budgets you can invest in a digital screen or a wall that can display these awards in an interactive format. It will require work to feed in the content and host the files. The advantages of this approach is the rich experience the wall can create as well as reducing the time and effort to host other awards that your organization wins. It is also eco-friendly with less paper and material getting used in the long term. On the other hand if you have limited budgets you can invest in acrylic sandwich boards that allow you to host prints of the awards. The advantage is that it easy to replace ongoing recognitions that you receive. However, there is no opportunity for the viewer to engage with the content.
Measuring the experience: With such installations often internal communicators are hard pressed to justify return on investments. How can you say for sure that your employees or prospective clients are impressed by what they see? You may want to consider a simple feedback mechanism to capture their thoughts real-time. Place a tablet or mobile device that allows them to share their perspectives. Try adding QR codes and track how many hits your intranet gets from these installations.
Consider ways to promote your wins: Can you conduct a short quiz that builds awareness of the awards that your organization has won? It can create a buzz that gets employees to visit the installations and then send in their entries. You may want to feature teams and individuals who won the awards or point employees to the links if the stories are already available on your intranet. Add a QR code on the award printouts so that employees can read up more about each win. Invite employees to share their feedback by tweeting or adding posts on your company’s Facebook page.
Before and after: How did your space look before the installation and did the awards showcase make the space look better? Let your employees see the transformation using simple photographs that can be posted on your intranet.
Have other ideas to promote your awards and wins? Interested to hear from you.
