Oli Minett, plant manager, Dennis Eagle
The response of our team to winning was huge. There is real pride in what they do. They have gone home and told their families. It’s all about celebrating with the team and we’ve entered more awards since.
One of the key things for us in entering the Red Rose Awards was around that recognition for our staff. We’re always saying thank you and congratulating them on achieving our targets. They are making 1,200 refuse collection vehicles a year.
That’s all the business stuff, but entering the Red Rose Awards was about that recognition. The other part of the thinking was around raising the profile of Dennis Eagle in Blackpool, to get our name out there so that more people get to know about us and what we do.
The two go together. The more people that know about us, the more our staff hear people talking about us and it builds that pride and momentum. This year, we looked at the awards and we went for the commitment to skills and the collaboration categories and fortunately we won both. It was telling a story about what we did and how we did it in Lancashire.
Simona Weldon, marketing manager, Darwen Terracotta
We are quite a small team of 50. The moment you see your company’s name on the massive screen on the night it is just like, ‘Oh!’
We’ve celebrated our double win by creating and editing videos from the evening. I’ve used photos that capture the whole event, we wanted to capture the energy we saw during the night and bring that to the rest of our colleagues. Then there are the small things, like changing our emails so they have the awards logo. We’ve also planned a celebration curry evening with all the staff.
The awards mean more people know who we are and what we do. It raises recognition and awareness. We’re now looking at more award entries.
Our advice to those thinking of entering awards is to be really put your effort into it, do your homework, do your research and on top of that be genuine, be completely honest. Also be open minded to business opportunities that the award may bring to you because, you never know when something good will come up.
Siobhan Courtney, managing director, Eventus Recruitment
I’m a big believer in saying ‘thank you’ to our team. It is a simple
thing to say. I thank them every time I pay them because I used to get thanked at a firm where I worked years ago and it’s always stuck with me.
We have an ‘employee of the quarter’ scheme and really good employee benefits that they all get and quite rightly deserve. We were just so chuffed to have won because we’ve been bridesmaids quite a few times.
We changed the way we approached our entry this year and I think that’s why we won. We do a lot of work with underprivileged children that we’d never really spoken about. We just talked about the business and profit, the more boring stuff. This year we spoke about all the work we do.
The award is giving us the confidence to realise that we are quite good! We’ve written a blog giving reasons for entering business awards and tips for entering them. It has gone down really well.
It can be a very fine line between being confident and arrogant and it can be really hard to walk that line when you’re celebrating and publicising an award win and sharing advice.
David Germain, chief executive, The Anderton Centre
We’re the very proud winners of the ‘Not for Profit’ category at this year’s Red Rose
Awards. It was my job to capture the feeling on the night and take it back to the team. It was about sharing it because the team are very proud of what they do and I’m very proud of them.
I joined the organisation nearly seven years ago and remember the trustees proudly announcing it as ‘Lancashire’s best kept secret’. To me that wasn’t a good thing and it needed changing. I took part in some peer mentoring and networking and someone suggested entering awards.
We’ve had some success, however what is important is that in the last 18-months to two years we have been strategic in the awards we’ve gone for.
There has to be a journey and a reason for entering. ‘What do we want to be known for? What do we want our key success to be?’ That really gave me a focus when entering this award.
I’ve never come out of an award process not learning something, either for the organisation or for me personally. Also, celebrate the successes when they come along, maximise that opportunity.
Peter Harrison, founder and owner, FGH Security
Awards are absolutely brilliant but they are a snapshot, a moment in time. Look at
Liverpool football club, one of the best in the world, they have just won the Premier League.
What are they doing at the moment? They are planning next year. As a business, you’ve got to keep doing the same. Now you’ve won something, it’s, ‘How do we keep that title? What else should we go for next year?’
Ask the question ‘Where can we go?’ Then feed that ambition in your team as well, you can’t rest on your laurels, can you?
The awards do help with revenue, with retention, with attracting more talent and growth. So many people think, ‘Shall I enter or shall I not?’ Well, if you don’t enter, you’re not going to win, so you’ve got to go for it. One thing that impressed me during the whole Red Rose Awards process was how robust the process was.
It’s not just a case of putting anything down on a piece of paper and throwing it through ChatGPT. The judges are going to look and they are going to interrogate. It is local business people choosing the winners. You’re not going to win these awards very easily; they have a lot of integrity.
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