This year’s IBI-METSTRADE Boat Builder Awards for Business Achievement, held in association with Raymarine, is now open for nominations. Why enter?
Well, here’s one great reason: It will culminate in a spectacular awards dinner where many of the international marine industry’s leading lights will gather on 19 November 2019 in the historic and spectacular setting of Amsterdam’s Het Scheepvaartmuseum – the National Maritime Museum. If you’ve yet to attend any of the previous four events, then you have missed a real highlight. If you have been there, then you’ll know what I mean. Beyond the celebrations though, I come back to the question – why enter?
In encouraging you to enter, I must declare a personal interest as the non-voting secretary to the Boat Builder Awards – hence I’m very happy for it to succeed! However, I think there are more powerful reasons relating to your own self-interests why you should consider a small investment in your time to make a nomination for yourself, or someone else. To explore this topic further, I’ve checked some wisdom out there about the importance of business awards and their positive impacts.
1. Makes you stand out from the crowd
Entrepreneur Magazine makes the case that business awards create a real buzz for your company that have multiple benefits. These include landing new customers, securing funding, retaining existing employees, attracting new talent and to associate yourself with other elite firms. Their blog on the topic was written back in 2010 but remains relevant now. It also includes some good follow-up actions if you are nominated and, perhaps even win.
2. Powerful motivator for your team
The Institute for Empirical Research in Economics at the University of Zurich issued a Working Paper back in 2008 called Awards – A view from psychological economics. It argues that awards present a “unique combination of different stimuli and that they are distinct and unlike other monetary awards.” It particularly focused on the effects on individuals in the workplace and concluded that awards are powerful motivators. You can see how this works by nominating individuals in your organisation, but research suggests any award you win will have a positive effect across your whole team. Particularly those involved in the products or services that are praised.
3. A time-out to review your own business
The UK’s National Federation of Self Employed & Small Businesses says that entering a business award makes you stop and review how far your business has come. You also have to do a form of strengths and weaknesses analysis when picking what to nominate, recognising the bits of your company or product line that are worthy of highlight and those that are not. Having been involved on the other side of the fence in compiling entries for companies that I work for, this is I think a very strong but hidden benefit of the entry process. Often we’ve wound up asking and answering questions internally with broader impacts on strategy. There’s even been the odd surprise, where you think you know your headline numbers and then realise there’s a trend in there that no-one spotted.
4. Supply chain recognition
We all know the rapidly growing importance of a fully integrated supply chain within marine leisure industry. To have the world’s boat builders internationally recognised at METSTRADE, with its 1600 suppliers of products and services, is the perfect place to celebrate the success of integrated thinking in terms of innovation and production efficiency. It is this inter-connected way of working that will secure the right products for future generations of leisure marine end users. Two of the Boat Builder Awards categories directly address collaborative solutions and name both a boat builder and its supply chain company, but it’s fair to say that most Boat Builder Award categories are dependent on teamwork across businesses. For this reason I suggest all companies in the boat builder supply chain should consider nominating to highlight, directly or obliquely, the significant contributions they are making to boats heading down the slipway today.
5. Marking what has been achieved
Sometimes we are so absorbed by the challenges ahead, we forget to pause to mark the successes of today. Or to record our thanks to those who have pioneered a trail. That’s an unquantifiable emotional reason for entering (don’t show your accountant), but we are lucky enough to work in a friendly industry that should be proud of where it has come from, as well as where it is going. Anyone can make a Boat Builder Award nomination to help the judges ensure we are marking those successes. There is no charge to do so. Alternately, please give us your tip for someone or something that the judges should take note of, by emailing boatbuilderawards@rai.nl.
Entries close on 4 October, which seems a long way over the horizon. However, why not take a little time now before it slips your attention to ensure you are in the running for the 2019 IBI-METSTRADE Boat Builder Awards for Business Achievement, held in association with Raymarine.
