5 top tips for award-winning people transformation.

October 2018 was a great month for me, my team and Specsavers. Nearly 2 years of graft to transform Apprenticeships across the business, culminating in the receipt of 3 awards within a few weeks; 2 of those were at the prestigous CIPD People Management Awards held at Grosvenor House.

In 2019 I decided to sit on the other side of the awards process and be a judge; and this year I'm doing it again.

Submissions are in, first round of judging is completed and second round will take place soon. So, I thought it would be a good opportunity to share my 5 Top Tips for award-winning transformation.

5 Top Tips

1. Go big. Whatever the transformation has been, make sure it is something that is worth shouting about. Marginal gains do improve performance, but are they really worthy of award-winning recognition? Identify something that has been truly transformed.
2. Prove it. Seek out multiple sources of evidence to prove the transformation made a difference. Speak with senior directors about the impact on business outcomes, speak to those involved in the transformation for their view. Use business improvement data and contributions directly from beneficiaries to help demonstrate the transformation mattered.
3. Write it well. Too often, there is intent to put an application forward but no real dedication to planning the effort or resources required to do it. Allocating the task to a single individual the week before the application window closes is unlikely to prove fruitful. Treat it as you would a project, with a proper plan of tasks along a timeline and map out who needs to do what when. When you're into the drafting, review and refine many times. We submitted version 10 of our application in 2018.How can you present your evidence in a way to make the judges care - it's a competition after all.
4. Sell it. The presentation stage is the opportunity for you to bring the application to life and to really make the judges care. Think: why you did this, what you did, your measures of success, and your evidence of it too.
5. Celebrate Success. To receive category winner was our best expectation, to receive Overall Winner too, took quite a long time to asymilate. Taking teams and beneficiaries on the journey of celebration not only recognises their contribution, but also helps the legacy of winning permeate through the business through their teams and connections.

Best of luck to this year's applicants.