Your association attracts incredibly talented professionals who not only enrich your member community but also make significant contributions to the wider industry. With your association’s unique position to identify people going above and beyond in your field, an awards program can recognise those accomplishments. 

However, you don’t want the administrative lift that it takes to pull off an awards program to overshadow the importance of the moment. Going digital with your awards management mitigates that stress. Leveraging the right software will save your team time, improve the award submission experience, increase the number of applications and nominations, and future-proof your program to weather whatever comes. 

As you move your association’s awards management into this new chapter, keep these best practices in mind to get the most out of your system.

1. Centralise your submission and nomination process

For many program administrators, the most enticing feature of a digital platform for awards management is its organiational capabilities. By moving all nomination activities into a single software environment, your association can break down the data silos that form when managing disparate file types and communications.

To reap the full benefits of your system’s organisational power, treat the platform as your award program’s single source of truth. As you train your team to use your new solution, emphasise that everything should be stored in it, from judging forms to recognition ideas. 

Here are a few other tips for administrative efficiency:

• Create and save templates for commonly sent messages and application prompts to streamline message creation and keep branding consistent.
• Set tiered permissions based on staff members’ roles. Program administrators will likely require full access, but limiting employees who only need basic data visibility to read-only access reduces the risk of mistakes. 
• Ensure your platform backs up to the cloud, so that multiple administrators can work simultaneously in a secure environment. 

While all of these features and practices will make managing your program from the backend much easier, a centralised, digital portal is also beneficial for candidates. The frictionless, easy-to-navigate interface signals to your candidates that your awards are legitimate and makes application convenient.

To enhance the candidate experience, consider implementing conditional logic in submission forms to automatically hide or reveal fields based on responses to previous questions. This keeps the interface clean and prevents candidates from feeling overwhelmed by irrelevant questions, further lowering the barrier to entry.

Taking these steps to center the candidate in the application process reinforces your awards’ value to your members. In the same way that optimising your learning programs or networking opportunities strengthens your association’s value proposition, these steps for your awards process will also pay off in increased member engagement. 

2. Automate communication across the candidate journey

Managing an award program requires constant coordination between administrators, nominees, and judges. By establishing an automated communication workflow, you can be confident that critical messages won’t slip through the cracks.

Keep the following considerations in mind as you set up workflows: 

• Proactive messaging: Administrators can set up automated triggers to deploy submission confirmations, alerts for approaching deadlines, and real-time judging status updates.
• Heightening engagement: Provide participants with consistent, timely communication throughout the cycle, for instance, sharing timelines at the beginning and letting candidates know if they’ve advanced to final rounds. Not only does this reduce the support ticket load on your team, but it also keeps members engaged in the process. 
• Powerful brand: Align your applicant portal and message templates with your association’s brand, replicating its colours, fonts, and styles to reinforce your organisation’s credibility throughout the process. 

Map out your communication sequence visually before configuring it in your software to identify any silent periods where applicants might lose interest. Sending out reminders throughout award cycles can reassure candidates that their hard work is actively moving through the evaluation pipeline.

3. Streamline judging and evaluation

The integrity of any award program hinges on transparency in the evaluation process. To ensure a fair judging phase, make sure your platform supports:

• Blind judging: Configure your system to hide applicant identities when necessary, ensuring that all evaluations remain fair and strictly unbiased.
• Standardised scoring rubrics: Creating a numeric system of evaluation criteria minimises subjectivity because decisions are made based on a pre-determined rubric. Then, administrators can compare scores side by side on a unified dashboard. 
• Multi-round review: OpenWater’s guide to awards management recommends enabling this feature that allows “judges to provide feedback, refine scores, and collaboratively narrow down selections before making final decisions.”

To bring judges up to speed, host a brief, recorded training webinar that shows them how to navigate your digital rubric interface. Providing them with an on-demand resource reduces login issues and helps them correctly understand the numerical weighting of different criteria. 

From your perspective as a program manager, you can track judges’ progress on administrative dashboards and identify who might need a gentle nudge to review their assigned submissions so you can make timely decisions.

4. Acknowledge and celebrate winners

When you present awards, your association can also recognise awardees with a digital badge. This lets winners share their accomplishments with their professional networks, such as on LinkedIn. However, that doesn’t mean physical certificates and plaques are negated. Some members may still prefer a tangible acknowledgment of their win, and besides, there’s nothing to say that you can’t do both!

Just as important as the acknowledgment, don’t forget to celebrate your awardees. This might involve hosting an event in their honour, presenting them with a thoughtful gift, or recognising their win with a photo gallery on your website (which winners can also share with their networks). With help from your digital tools to smooth the awards management process, you’ll have the time and mental bandwidth to focus on making this phase of the awards process special for winners. 

5. Leverage data to improve future programs

Another benefit of a digital awards management infrastructure is that it automatically captures a wealth of information regarding how users interact with your forms, guidelines, and portals. Analysing this captured data allows you to use it as an evolving strategic asset through the following processes:

• Analytics tracking: Administrators gain immense value by reviewing core metrics like submission drop-off rates, average completion times, demographic participation patterns, and crossover between awards submissions and other application and review processes like grants or abstracts.
• Continuous improvement: Teams can leverage these concrete insights to refine award categories, adjust eligibility or review criteria, or simplify application forms for the next cycle.
• Holistic strategy: Applying these data insights to improve future award programs actively supports the association’s overall goals surrounding long-term member engagement and retention. You’ll be better able to validate your members’ accomplishments, which iMIS cites as a primary tactic for member retention.

Pay special attention to the specific form fields where users spend the most time before abandoning their application. Rewording complex questions or providing brief definitions in high-friction areas can improve your overall completion rates next year.

In addition to the quantitative data your platform’s dashboard provides, don’t forget to check in with your staff, members, and applicants throughout the process. To get the full story and create the best awards experience possible, the feedback you receive will help you continue to iterate on your awards program and uplift the incredible accomplishments of your members.