E-learning and LMS blog articles

For many L&D managers, these are challenging times. How do you continue to deliver engaging and valuable training while facing tight budget restrictions? Employee engagement is a perennial challenge – how are your adapting to new technologies to provide employees with the tools they need to work effectively? And closely tied to that, is ensuring that you can onboard new staff quickly and upskill existing employees to maintain the necessary staffing levels. With this as the background, how can you clearly demonstrate the value of your learning programmes across your organisation? 

This is where entering an award can be a big win! Entering awards can positively impact these (and more!) major L&D challenges by clearly proving value while increasing morale across your team and the wider business.   

Just ask Arriva, one of our clients that won Totara’s Best Compliance Project award 2023. The recognition and validation of that team across Arriva over the past year has been amazing! 

And you don’t need to tackle it alone either. While it might seem like a mammoth task, we regularly partner with our clients to enter industry awards so that we can do a lot of the heavy lifting. And for some, putting your business forward for an award might feel a bit uncomfortable, but we think it’s great to be able to shout about your achievements…nobody else is going to do it for you. 

So why not grab a quick coffee and take a few minutes out of your busy schedule to run through a few of the key benefits that we’ve compiled of why you should be entering L&D industry awards. 

Here are five reasons why applying for L&D awards will be one of the best things you can do for your teams this year

1. Motivate your team

Winning - or even just entering - an award is a great way to show your recognition for your team’s hard work and dedication. Entering your company into industry awards gives you a chance to celebrate their impressive achievements, highlight and reward individuals for their hard work, demonstrating that you value the efforts they’ve been putting in - something that’s sure to boost morale and motivation! 

And bringing the team together to reflect on those achievements through applying for an award can be a great team building experience.  We don’t always find the time to reflect on and realise just how successful things have been when we’re focused on our day-to-day tasks.  And being recognised externally for these achievements is a great feeling! 

And not only will it increase morale on your L&D team, but it will also enable you to increase awareness and interest throughout the whole organisation, which can only be a good thing when it comes to increasing engagement with your learning programmes.   

2. Attract talented people

Great employees want to work with great companies. Winning (or even being short-listed for) an award is more than a benefit for your current team, it’s also a way to demonstrate that your company is an industry leader. Taking home an L&D award can position your company as the best option for job-seeking talent. It shows that you take e-learning and employee development seriously.  

After all, who doesn’t want to work for an award-winning company? 

3. Brand recognition 

Winning an award is a great opportunity to showcase your brand. 

Even being shortlisted for an L&D award gets you noticed – by the media, your stakeholders, your competitors and most importantly your customers. L&D awards provide an excellent PR opportunity to shout about your achievements, offering you the chance to show off your hard work to potential clients, partners, vendors and so on.   

And it’s not just your company’s profile that rises – awards significantly add credibility to your own personal profile and reputation. So, make sure you make the most from any shortlisting or win with press releases, blog posts, social media posts, etc - this is a good news story, and you really should be telling everyone you know!  

4. An opportunity to reflect and benchmark

One of the most often over-looked benefit of applying for an award is simply taking the time to complete the application process. This gives you a chance to examine what you’ve been doing objectively, to think about how it makes you stand out from the crowd. 

Moreover, because it is a competition, it also enables you to benchmark how you’re doing against how others are using their L&D tools. In today’s rapidly evolving L&D market, this can help you look at lessons learnt and identify where recommendations for improvements can be made.  This allows you to either gain inspiration about how you could improve in certain areas or give yourself a well-earned pat on the back. 

5. Schmooze with industry experts 

Many L&D awards also come with a glitzy awards ceremony, presenting winners and those short-listed with a great opportunity to network with like-minded L&D professionals. And while winning is the main objective, if you can meet other leaders and learn from their successes, surely that can be seen as a win in itself? 

Also, let’s not forget that attending an industry awards ceremony is a great night out, with good company, entertainment, and food. A great time to celebrate all you and your team’s hard work! 

Summing it up

So, in summary, I urge you all to make 2024 the year that you lose any inhibitions that you might have around sharing the wonderful success you’re having and start shouting about how amazingly brilliant you and your L&D team are! 

And at Hubken, we are here to help.  Award application writing might seem a bit too time-consuming, but we can take on much of the heavy lifting – after all, your success is also our success!   

Allow us to help share the workload and showcase your unique projects.   

We have seen some amazing success from a partnered approach to awards. For example:  

• Arriva and Hubken win the 2023 Totara Award for Best Compliance project 
• Garden Centre Association and Hubken win Highly Commended 2024 Totara Award for Best use of Multi-tenancy  
• Garden Centre Association was also a finalist in the Association Excellence Awards 2023 for Best Learning / Professional Development Programme  

Get started today! 

Get in touch with your Account Manager if you are interested in submitting an e-learning award application – more than happy to walk you through the various options!   

We’re proud to be one of the UK’s leading e-learning experts and to be working with so many award-winning clients.