Top tips for entering the awards

From the RoSPA Awards team

Our Awards department oversees 2,000 entries to the RoSPA Health and Safety Awards each year and speaks to a number of entrants to assist with their application. Below are their top tips for entering the RoSPA Health and Safety Awards to make sure your entry is as good as possible.

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Whether you're entering the RoSPA Awards for the first time or a returning an entrant, our FREE checklist will help you and your team naviagte the awards submission process and meet key deadlines.

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Know why you’re entering

Entering the RoSPA Awards can bring many benefits to your organisation internally and externally. Make sure you understand why your organisation is entering the RoSPA Awards and what you’re getting out of them. Are you looking to benchmark performance, enhance your team morale, win tenders and new clients, get inspired to drive change etc?

Start early

Don’t leave it to the last minute and don’t underestimate the time needed to "sell your organisation". A good RoSPA Award submission might take between four and six weeks, off and on, to complete. This award submission includes clear descriptions of how your systems work and evidence that shows them in action.

Do your research

The awards submission is a team effort and shouldn’t sit with an individual within your department. Make sure you reflect on the last year as a team and get everyone to contribute. Once you have completed your submission get somebody from outside the team to look at it before you sign it off and send it to us.

Reflect and share

Your awards entry isn’t just a form to fill in, but an annual opportunity to reflect on and celebrate what you are achieving in your management of health and safety. This is a key learning/development aspect of your submission. Make sure your submission looks back at good performance but also demonstrates how you are looking forward, and seeking out continuous improvement.

Read the questions carefully and answer all parts

A number of questions within your entry cover a number of multiple themes and the marking scheme reflects this. Therefore it’s key to make sure you are using the current year guidance notes as questions may change and you need to ensure you cover all the themes within the question.

It’s all about the evidence, so prove it

When writing your entry, your narrative alone won’t gain your organisation full marks for the question, you need to show evidence. For each point you make within your answer, think “how can I show this is action?”. Each question allows you to evidence eight pieces of work: make sure you use the full evidence allowance.

Learn from other entrants

Looking for further ongoing advice on how to make the most out of your entry? The Awards Excellence Forum was created for just this reason. It brings award entrants together to provide each other with support and ideas to improve not only their entry submission, but also their overall safety management systems, by learning from industry peers. The Awards Excellence Forum is also closely linked with our Awards Ambassador network, who head up our entrant mentoring scheme.