Reflections from the IoIC Excellence Awards

I don’t think anyone starts out in their career with the goal of winning awards, unless you’re an Olympic athlete or something like that of course!

A lot of the time, because what you do at work becomes second nature, you don’t realise how amazing it is.

I’m definitely someone who likes to work away in the background and I find praise difficult to take in, often because I think ‘I’m just doing my job’ and don’t deserve it.

Winning one of these would be nice!

I’ve been thinking a lot about awards recently. Not only because our Marketing colleagues are busy with their submissions for various things, but myself and Jenny, Bedfordshire’s Internal Communicates Manager, recently returned from York after making the shortlist for an Institute of Internal Communications (IoIC) award.

Sadly we didn’t take the top prize but we did get an Award for Excellence which we were very happy with. We also got a certificate which has pride of place on our desk.

The National Railway Museum was the perfect venue!

Although my background is in media relations and external communications, I have been more and more involved with internal communications as my career has progressed, something that I’ve really enjoyed.

I felt like a bit of impostor at the ceremony because the staff newsletter is Jenny’s creation which she set up and took care of long before I joined the team. But when I stopped and thought about it, I remembered that the newsletter is a team effort.

Me and Jenny work together to get it out every fortnight and we work hard to make sure it is full of things our colleagues across the University want to know about.

So I guess I want this post to be a reminder to everyone to take a moment and look at what you have achieved recently. Look at the do-to list you’ve managed to complete. Look at the piece of work you’ve finished that you’ve been working on for weeks. Think of the impact you made to a colleague by helping them out or making them a cup of tea when they needed it.

When you are close to something, you forget what a positive impact you’re making. We don’t have to be rocket scientists or anything that fancy but our efforts in our jobs do matter and do make a different. So take a moment to give yourself a little pat on the back - you deserve it.