Awards Judging Criteria

An award shows appreciation of an employee’s merit over his or her colleagues. Because of its importance, it makes sense to seriously consider the development of nominations and the judging criteria for awards applicants so that the most deserving person wins the award.

Coordinating the decision to award the employee is up to the judges, who will describe in detail the nominations and selection criteria for applicants as well as the procedure for judging and deciding on the award winners.

Since the judging process takes place according to specific judging criteria, there may be numerous criteria for selecting judges, depending on the company, the participants, or the event itself. Every judge may introduce his or her own criteria, or they may be established by the rules of the contest. Regardless of which method is chosen, fair judging is impossible without awards criteria. Let’s see how awards judging criteria are formed by categories.

Variety of judging criteria

For a corporate contest planning  to be a success, whether for a company or an individual, judges will have to demonstrate integrity on a range of characteristics: overall ethical, professional, and moral standards; a commitment to their chosen profession; clarity of certain values; etc. They must then transform these values into actual behaviour, environmental and social responsibility, depending on the awards and the categories offered. The sky is the limit. There is a variety of criteria for judging:

• Event concept
• Value
• Delivery and impact
• Overview of the innovation or product
• Why you think your entry should win
• Total budget
• The usability/functionality of the product
• The effectiveness and performance of the product
• Personal vs. professional qualities
• And so much more

Any entries that do not include information under all of these headings will be marked down because these are the official judging criteria. It is impossible to avoid or omit those criteria while making entries. They are important markers that are needed for a contest to actually occur and for the winners to be chosen. If appropriate, you may include up to three pieces of supporting materials, such as photos and videos, and upload them online via Judgify’s judging management system.

Even more than that, online judging allows for the customisation of judging criteria, setting up your own rules, and managing judging rounds and assigning judges to them. In addition, judges will utilise a login and password that are provided to protect the contest data. 

According to Searchawards, judging criteria are a must since judges will read and pre-score all entry forms while considering any supporting materials submitted. They may also be asked to give a score for each answer within the entry form. These will be combined to give an overall score to each entry. All judges’ pre-scores will then be combined, and the highest scoring entries will then determine the shortlist. Supporting information will be added to define the scores correctly so that no mistakes are made while defining the winners, especially if they are processed manually in real judging rounds.

How to develop awards judging criteria for awarding employees

The best judging practices presuppose a range of actions taken for the best judging awards criteria development. Choosing winners fairly according to those criteria will result in a successful awards contest.

• It is necessary to compile and match descriptions of criteria and achievements in relation to different categories of employees, such as top managers, other professionals, and top performers.
• The recognized success of a top manager will be a complex project, and an ordinary employee can be rewarded for the fact that he or she has gone above and beyond for a whole year.
• Descriptions of criteria and achievements should be variable, containing sets of several items that characterize what employees must do to be worthy of the award.
• When listing the criteria for merits and achievements, judges may use the logical operators “and/or”.
• The criteria must be clear to everyone involved so that decision-makers for the award process can verify the real successes of the applicants with the criteria detailed in the judging list.
• It is obvious that the assessment of “worthy/not worthy” is, by definition, subjective; but the more clearly judges describe what the employee has to do in order to receive the award, the easier it will be to choose the nominees and eventual winner.

There are also some necessary qualifications for the preparation of criteria and their descriptions that must be taken into consideration, so ask the company managers what they want to reward their subordinates for. This piece of information will be useful for the facilitation of the chosen criteria and selection of the most appropriate wording to establish the dialogue between the judges and the participants.

Conclusion

Judging is hard work, and there is often not enough time for good preparation, but this does not mean that the criteria for awards should be created completely on the spot. There should be a serious approach to developing nominations and judging criteria for awards applicants and then choosing the best ones. Understanding the importance of the work of even ordinary employees is vital. Even if employees receive such recognition only once a year, that’s better than nothing at all. However, this is only possible with fair judges and the best practices in choosing awards criteria.

Use online judging management platforms like Judgify to assist you with the judging tasks.

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