Top Tips For Entering the UK Employee Ownership Awards

Five top tips to help maximise your submission to the UK Employee Ownership Awards. 

Image: Scenes from last year's UK Employee Ownership Awards

1. EO is all about people – use evidence to showcase them

If you’re still in the early stages of EO, you might not have any comparisons to share. But you could use employee quotes to evidence how your people were involved in the transition and how well they understand EO and their roles. 

The further into your transition you get, you may have emerging trends or evidence of employee / employee voice impacts in supporting business performance and satisfaction levels.

Great ways to evidence this are by providing insights from employee surveys and any increases in satisfaction and/or engagement scores. 

Retention and recruitment are another powerful evidence point. They help showcase the impact of a growing EO culture that’s building business resilience. Measures here include a decrease in employee churn or an increase in employee tenure. 

Or, has your EO been embedded into recruitment attracting the people and skills needed to help your business thrive? 

But don’t forget your other stakeholders. Being able to evidence how your EO has driven positive impacts for customers, suppliers, and others business stakeholders since becoming EO is likely to take you closer to a win. 

So, share testimonials, customer satisfaction scores, or service improvements that have delivered positive impacts.

2. Success looks different in every business, share your difference

Make your application stand out by making it clear if you’re bucking any trends in your sector, region, or linked professions. If its newsworthy to any of your key audiences, then include it!

If you have an increased employee retention rate, how does it compare to others in your sector, especially if this is an issue facing the sector? The same applies to attracting and retaining talent.

Don’t assume anyone else will know where EO is driving an advantage in your business. Share it loud and proudly.

If EO has supported any accreditations, awards, or anything else that matters to your business, then it’s all relevant to your application. That includes anything that’s boosted your reputation with stakeholders.

3. When it comes to business performance there’s a lot you can share

If you’re going for ‘Employee Owned Business of the Year’, you need to be able to demonstrate a positive financial trend in your business. 

This doesn’t mean you have to have the highest turnover, but you need to outline how EO is having a positive impact, contributing to targets, and is on track with your goals.

If this is your best year to date, and EO has contributed in any way that you can outline and evidence, then it’s the optimum time to recognise this success. 

Or if you’ve supported a business that’s having early or evolving success, you really should give them a nudge – it’ll reflect well on the support you’ve given them.

You might be on track to pay – or have paid – a bonus or dividend to your employees. Or have you set an ambitious target, delivered something new or in new ways that’s had a positive effect for your business?

If you’re still early into your transition, business performance may be evidenced in all manner of ways:

• More efficiency from new working practices or budget savings
• Investments in training, knowledge, and skills to support your EO
• Great suggestions from employees – anything that makes you think what a great call / or wow that was a great impact / or that was unexpected.

4. Go back to basics and remember why you became EO in the first place

Regardless of which category you decide to enter, it’s worth starting with all the reasons you transitioned in the first place. 

Was preserving company values and culture the main driver or was it to root jobs in the local region, perhaps to preserve a founder’s legacy?

From this starting point, you can begin to consider how these aims have come into fruition and how you can evidence them. This will help you build a compelling awards nomination that puts you in good stead to be shortlisted.

5. From shop floor to leaders – shout about an EO champion in your business

Every business has them, those incredible people who go above and beyond and help elevate the entire organisation. 

For employee owned businesses, that’s someone who lives and breathes EO and who actively works to promote and develop EO inside the business and beyond. 

Best of all, this person can occupy any level of seniority – in fact the less senior, the more this shows how well EO has embedded in your business.

Your EO champion might be someone who works on the shop floor or out driving, for example. What matters is how they tirelessly champions employee ownership with passion, commitment in all that they do. 

Consider your entire business to identify the best fit for the ‘Employee Owner of the Year’ award. 

With these tips to hand, your nomination will be nothing short of excellent. Our judges will have their work cut out for them to pick a shortlist.

But you’ve only got until 23:59 Friday 5 September to submit your nominations. So get cracking!

If you’re ready to submit, click or tap here.

The UK Employee Ownership Awards are proudly sponsored by Baxendale Employee Ownership.