People-worthy = Award-worthy
Winning awards for your culture might seem like a vanity metric. However, award recognition often serves as a powerful catalyst for cultural transformation and leadership accountability.
When an organisation wins an award, particularly for its workplace practices, it validates the emotional intelligence and engagement strategies that underpin performance, rather than the results themselves.
Awards also function as effective recruitment tools. Talented people gravitate toward award-winning cultures using websites such as Glassdoor to find employers who can provide an environment in which they can flourish.
However, the real value of awards lies in their ability to create a feedback loop of excellence. Teams that receive recognition experience heightened motivation, strengthened sense of purpose, and accelerated commitment to your organisation's values and the results you seek to achieve. This recognition-performance cycle becomes self-perpetuating, driving continuous improvement.
It’s even more effective if the feedback is driven by senior leaders who demonstrate their commitment to change. I’ve worked with many organisations that have won awards for their culture and what stands out most is the accountability for change from the top.
It’s much easier to maintain momentum on cultural transformation if leaders are bought into the activity required to create something worthy of an award.
Perhaps most significantly, the process of applying for awards forces leadership to articulate what makes their culture unique. This reflection process alone can uncover insights about your organisational DNA that might otherwise remain hidden in the day-to-day operations.
Don't underestimate the power of celebrating these wins. When handled properly, award celebrations reinforce the behaviours and mindsets that created the winning culture in the first place, ensuring these positive attributes become permanently embedded in your workplace.
Remember, a truly vibrant workplace culture isn't built with the goal of winning awards, the awards come as a natural consequence of creating an environment where great work gets done and people genuinely thrive.
For a culture to be award-worthy, it must first be people-worthy.
Whilst I’m on the subject of awards, I’m delighted that my book ‘Detox Your Culture’ has been shortlisted in the 2025 Business Book Awards.
If you’re interested in creating the conditions not only for great work, but also to avoid a toxic culture, you can get a copy here.
