The OpenWater Blog

What Consumes the Most Time During Your Awards Program & Why You Should Care

Imagine that your awards program just got started.

As the executive that oversees the process, it’s critical that you ensure everything gets done. But, do you know just how much time and effort is going in to completing these critical tasks? Even if you stay up to date on the process, it’s difficult to have detailed oversight of the day to day tasks that go into getting everything running.

However, taking the time to recognize and learn where your staff is spending the most time can help take your program to the next level. Why? Because doing so doesn’t just give you better oversight of your program, but can highlight areas of improvement in the awards process.

In this article, we’re going to identify the common time sucks that burden many awards programs and its staff. And, perhaps more importantly, we’ll also address how to reduce or eliminate these burdens, freeing up your staff to focus on other important tasks to continue to improve your program.

5 Common Time-Consuming Tasks for Your Staff Members

You already know that your staff is amazing. After all, they’re able to stretch themselves as thin as is necessary to ensure that your program runs smoothly. But, what if you could reduce these time burdens freeing your staff to utilize their unique expertise to produce improved outcomes for your program?

So, where are your staff members spending the majority of their time?

1. Day-to-Day Support

Whether it’s your judges or entrants, it comes as no surprise that day-to-day support is essential for your program. Staff members are often required to respond to endless amounts of phone calls and emails to answer questions that surface on a regular basis. And, if your program is quite large, this can take up a lot more time than you think.

2. Tracking Submissions

As submissions come pouring in, your staff members must stay on top of each entry to ensure that it is organized and judged fairly and efficiently. Of course, this can take a significant amount of time, especially if you’re still using binders and spreadsheets and email to keep track of each entry.

3. Judging Selection and Coordination

Your judges are extremely important not only because they are necessary to execute your program, but because their industry renown and expertise generates excitement that encourages individuals to submit an entry. However, the amount of time required for your staff to constantly check in with these experts and ensure each entry gets scored can take a lot of time, especially if you have a large program.

4. Marketing

For most awards program, it’s necessary to undertake traditional and social marketing tactics to spread the word about a program. However, organizing social media marketing campaigns, email campaigns, and other marketing strategies can easily consume a large portion of your staff’s days.

5. Data Analysis

Data analysis takes a significant amount of time as it’s imperative to ensure that all calculations are correct. And, because you have to determine the winners and coordinate for the awards gala once all data is accounted for, you might have to send your staff into overdrive to get everything done in time.

So what can you do?

Identifying which of these common time-consuming areas is eating away at your staff’s time is the first step. The next is figuring out a way to ease the burden.

One solution that many organizations are turning to is using a single awards management system that can handle many of these tasks ranging from support to data analysis. Such a system can reduce or eliminate these time-consuming jobs, freeing your staff up to focus on other more important tasks.

To help you get started our Awards Budget Calculator can provide the assistance you need by illustrating where your time and money are being spent. Download it for free today to begin the process of optimizing your awards program for success!

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Miriam Hancock

Miriam Hancock
Miriam is the Marketing Coordinator for OpenWater. When she isn't writing and designing content she paints and cooks for her own personal blog.

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