And the award goes to…

This time of year tends to feel like we’re in an award season frenzy. It’s not only Hollywood that has a busy calendar with A-list celebs oozing glamour on the red carpets of the Oscars, Golden Globes and Baftas to name a few, it’s also pretty busy in Higher Education too - although perhaps with a little less glamour.

The Communications Team have been pretty busy helping to launch a number of internal awards and initiatives of our own, including the Student Experience Awards and the Annual Staff Conference, both of which recognise and celebrate our achievements and remind us of reasons to be proud of the University and its passionate staff and students. 

Although, when you’re so busy and engrossed in the day job, or with your studies, it often seems hard to find the time to enter awards or nominate someone deserving, adding yet another task to the to-do-list. But one of the privileges of working in communications is that we get to learn of so many great things that our staff and students are achieving. Therefore nominating someone for a student experience award really is a great way to highlight impressive projects, students and staff and give them the recognition they deserve.

Even if no award procures, just the exercise of making a nomination, writing an award submission or being shortlisted is a real boost to your motivation and helps you put your efforts into perspective and reflect on what you have achieved, which many of us often don’t often take the time to do.

In fact, here in Internal Communications, we were really chuffed to recently be shortlisted for an Institute of Internal Communications regional awards for our staff newsletter @beds. We very nearly didn’t make the time to do it, but the effort has paid off and we're pleased we did it.

If you needed any more inspiration, below are a few more reasons on why it’s worth nominating someone for an award or submitting one yourself:

•  It helps to bring external recognition for you and your organisation and which positively impacts on reputation
• It’s great for your CV and your linked-in  profile
• It can help with your internal profile and can spark other ideas in other teams
• It can help you gain more prestige with external contacts
• It boosts your morale

So if you know of someone that you feel deserves some recognition, check out our awards and get nominating.

However, even if there aren’t any awards or nominations that you want to make this time around, just a simple celebration of work gone well or showing gratification to staff and students for hard work undertaken can also make a real difference.