Business has never faced tougher challenges than we are experiencing here in the UK at present. Recovering from the worldwide COVID pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, soaring energy costs, and rampant inflation.
But the quality of the UK business leadership function, in both individuals and teams, has always been something that the UK economy could rely on, and leadership awards recognise this invaluable contribution.
In this blog, we look at 10 of the top UK leadership awards celebrating outstanding leadership achievements.
The LDC Top 50
Entering its 5th year, the LDC Top 50 2022 recognises inspiring leaders who are behind the success of many of the UK’s most innovative, fast-growing, successful businesses.
As the private equity arm of Lloyds Banking Group, and in conjunction with The Times newspaper, the LDC partners with forward-looking, ambitious management teams, striking the correct balance between creating challenge and supplying support with flexible growth capital as major all minority shareholders.
The Business Brilliance Awards
The Business Brilliance Awards are open to both businesses and individuals here in the UK and from around the world and celebrate the success of leading executives and companies.
There is a wide range of award categories encompassing individuals and organisations that have excelled in function and performance. Please click here for the full list of categories.
The deadline for 2022 award applications is the 23rd of September 2002. The finalists will be announced on the 24th of October 2002, with awards being presented on the 1st of December 2022 at the Sheraton, London Park Lane, London.
You can review last year’s winners on this page of the boc-uk.com website.
The TMA Individual And Chapter Awards
Leading businesses aren’t born – they are forged, often by turnaround management, and the TMA (Turnaround Management Association) Awards celebrate and recognise individuals and companies for their outstanding achievements in this business sector. Here in the UK, it is the TMA’s London chapter that spearheads the UK awards.
Individual awards include:
- The Individual Excellence Award
- The Emerging Leader Award
- The Chapter Impact Award – Awarded to the founder of a TMA chapter, someone fronting a successful programme, event or campaign that reinforced the chapter.
Chapter awards include:
- Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
- International Chapter Excellence
- The Most Innovative Programme Award
Please click here to learn more about the TMA, its 54 worldwide chapters, and its 10,000 members.
The Forum Awards
Every leading business must have a good customer contact record. The Forum Awards highlight successful initiatives that take customer contact to new heights by creating and embedding. New ground-breaking approaches.
Open to all professionals working in the customer contact function, the forum awards acknowledge transformation, innovation, and the creation of new partnerships.
The awards cover:
- Innovation and Transformation
- The Best Team Practice
- The Partnership Award
- The Individual Award
Whether your specialism is in back office, mobile workforce, contact centres, digital channels, or sales operations, if you’ve played an important role in establishing your company as a market leader, you and/or your team could qualify for a prestigious Forum Award.
The BCI European Awards
The BCI European Awards are given to professionals in the continuity and resilience space. Applicants must have in-depth knowledge of the discipline and be able to show that they have helped to improve the organisational resilience of one or more companies. Awards are available in both the private and public sectors. Other award categories include:
- The Most Effective Recovery Programme
- The Continuity and Resilience Newcomer
- The Continuity and Resilience Team
- The Continuity and Resilience Service/Product Provider
- Continuity and Resilience in Innovation
- The Continuity and Resilience Contributor Award
- Collaboration in Resilience Award
Consisting of in excess of 9,000 members in over 120 countries, the BCI Network of Business Continuity and Resilience’s raison d’être is to ensure the world’s organisations stay on track regardless of the circumstances.
The Lloyds Bank British Business Excellence Awards
The UK Lloyds Bank British Business Excellence Awards (BBEAs) is one of the most prestigious awards institutions. It celebrates innovation and success partnered with resilience in the British workplace. Whether you are an entrepreneur, a midmarket, micro-, SME or FTSE 100 business, there is an appropriate British Business Excellence Award waiting to be claimed.
The 2022 leadership awards number 17 in total, including 4 new categories, which are:
- The Diversity Champion of the Year Award
- The ESG Champion of the Year Award
- The Business Transformation of the Year Award
- The Leader of the Year Award
Entrants will be asked to showcase how technology has been applied in order to apply the creativity that went into proving their operational infrastructure and productivity and the innovations that went into designing the solution.
Best Improver Special Awards
The Best Improver Special Awards is an award program created to recognise and showcase the leading improvers on the British business landscape. Any business’s best asset is its staff, and the b-Heard survey is the vehicle by which employee engagement can be determined.
To make sure that the leading organisations that you can work for are continually recognised regionally and nationally within their sector, a best company accreditation is used to create league tables, enabling businesses to track their progress.
The winner of a Best Improver Special Award is established by working out the overall scores from questions posed in the b-Heard survey compared to those of the previous year. The organisation that is awarded the highest overall improvement score in the various categories is the one to receive the final accolade.
The Association Excellence Awards
The existence of chartered institutes, professional organisations, and trade bodies is there to ensure that leading companies have the support they need to stay at the forefront of their trade sectors. It not only makes sure that these companies’ voices are heard but also that their causes are championed.
According to Helen Whiteman, Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Taxation and one of the judges of The Association Excellence Awards, honours will be bestowed on individuals who impact their clients through their creativity and innovation.
Awards will be conferred on those who have succeeded in trying something new, who have involved and included others and who have considered, reflected, and learned from the impact their efforts have brought about.
The Award winners in 2021 can be reviewed on the Association’s webpage.
The CRO Leadership Awards
CRO stands for “Contract Research Organisations.” Outsourcing is fundamental to many business models and operations, and the CRO award focuses on companies that have recently undertaken successful outsourcing projects within the pharmaceutical industry
The CRO Awards takes a different approach from most other leadership awards as it is determined by feedback from sponsor businesses that use outsourcing. Awards are divided into three groups:
- Big Pharma
- Small Pharma
- Overall Pharma (combination of large and small)
The winners of the 2022 awards have already been announced, and nominations for the 2023 awards will commence in September 2022.
The Leadership Awards
The Leadership Awards were created to recognise people who are role models within their businesses and who establish benchmarks for their competitors. Those receiving an award will be able to demonstrate first-class leadership and show it has impacted their company.
Impact is measured by improved financial performance, internal organisational culture and external reputation, meeting adversity and challenges head-on, and enabling others to succeed.
The 2022 awards focus on individuals who have been able to highlight their qualities in terms of innovation, resilience, and communication as they lead their companies through the worst of the COVID pandemic.
Leadership quality can also be demonstrated through interactions with other bodies whereby the nominee in question champions the region, the sector, or underrepresented individuals.
Applicants do not come solely from higher management positions but can be working anywhere in the business, showcasing their behaviour, leadership, and mindset skills
Awards are broken down into three geographical regions:
- The East Midlands Leadership Awards
- The West Midlands Leadership Awards
- The Northern Leadership Awards
For a full list of the categories in each of the regions, please visit the site.
Conclusion
This blog has highlighted a small snippet of 10 of the many Leadership Awards that UK businesses and professionals can apply or be nominated for, with a view to demonstrating the wide range of options available.