Evidence Your EO Story in the UK Employee Ownership Awards

Entering this year’s UK Employee Ownership Awards? Here’s some top tips for maximising your submission. If there’s any secrets to awards success, you’ll find them here!

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

1. EO is about people: use your evidence to support this

In the early days, you might not have any comparisons to share, however, you could use employee quotes to evidence how your people were involved in the transition and how well they understand EO and their roles – ideally a range; leaders, employee owners and if you are there yet anyone in EO roles.

As time goes on, you may have emerging trends or evidence of the impacts employees (or employee voice) are supporting in your business from performance through to satisfaction levels – insights from employee surveys, satisfaction or engagement score increases, are some of the ways to evidence this. 

Retention and recruitment are another great evidence point that shows the impact of your growing EO culture that is building resilience in the business, such as a decrease in employee churn or increase in employee tenure. 

Or, has your EO been embedded into your recruitment attracting the people and skills needed to help your business thrive, or indeed supporting more development and progression of employee owners within the business? 

Plus, don’t forget your other stakeholders, being able to evidence how your EO has driven positive impacts for your customers, suppliers and others business stakeholders since becoming EO is likely to take you closer to a win - you may have testimonials, customer satisfaction scores or service improvements that have delivered positive impacts. 

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

Making it clear if you’re bucking any trends in your sector, region, or linked professions is another way to add colour to make your application stand out – 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.

However, each business is different and there may be multiple ways we might not be aware of where EO is driving an advantage in your business, or that needed to be part of your considerations when planning your approach to EO. Don’t assume anyone else will know that – share it proudly.

If EO has supported any accreditations, awards or anything that matters to your business, any professions that are prevalent in your business, that has boosted your reputation with stakeholders, then it’s all relevant to the application.

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 does not mean you have to have the highest or most turnover, it means you need to outline how your 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 is having early or evolving success, you really should give them a nudge – it’ll reflect well on the support you have given them.

You might be on track to 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 has had a positive effect for your business.

For those in the early days, business performance may be evidenced in all manner of ways such as:

• more efficiency from new working practices or budget savings
• investments in training, knowledge and skills to support your EO
• great suggestions or activity driven 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. It’s likely to be all of these and more. 

From this starting point, you can begin to consider how these aims have come into fruition and how you can evidence them. This will all 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 that 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 6 September to submit your nominations. So get cracking!

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

The UK Employee Ownership Awards are proudly sponsored by Howden.