The OpenWater Blog

Does Your Awards Ceremony Accomplish Your Goals?

Often times, organizations host an awards ceremony for their awards program because it’s what they’ve always done. They then find themselves spending time, money, and effort on planning and hosting an event for the sake of having it. How it contributes to achieving the program’s goals is forgotten.

To determine whether or not hosting an awards ceremony contributes to achieving your goals:

1. List your program’s overarching goals.

Listing the goals enables you to visualize your desired outcome(s). The exercise also has the additional benefit of ensuring that everyone in your team are on the same page of what you’re trying to accomplish together.

2. List the way(s) in which your event contributes to achieving each goal.

If you find that you’re unable to come up with a way in which the event contributes to achieving a particular goal, think of a way in which you can reconfigure the awards ceremony. Or, disregard that particular goal if it’s not applicable to your event.

3. Determine how you will measure the success or failure.

You can’t evaluate the success or failure if you don’t know how you will measure it.

4. Evaluate.

Evaluate your awards ceremony. Don’t be afraid of negative results if you do come across them. Negative results are highly valuable because they will drive you to change and improve your awards ceremony and your awards program.

To help you with this exercise, we created a worksheet that you can customize and fill out for your awards program.

[button class=”button black large” href=”http://www.getopenwater.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Does_Your_Awards_Ceremony_Accomplish_Your_Goals_Worksheet.pdf” align=”center” target=”_self”]Download Worksheet[/button]

 
This blog post is an excerpt of our upcoming book on how to effectively and efficiently manage awards programs. Interested in learning more about it?

Click to receive updates on our book!

Theresa Delgado

Theresa is our resident awards guru. She managed the Greeting Card Association's LOUIE Awards before joining us here at OpenWater. She brings first hand knowledge and experience in successfully managing and expanding awards programs.

Resources for Motivated Awards Professionals

What We’re Reading: Social Login Preferences, Foodie Culture at Events, and Negative Feedback