Business Entry Criteria
Responding to the Business Criteria
Entering your Business in the Geelong Business Excellence Awards is a 2 part process, The Written Entry and The Site Visit.
The written entry is your opportunity to respond to the criteria and to convey - what you do, how you do it and the resulting benefit/s for your business
If your entry receives the required 375 points, you may have the opportunity to present to the judges at a site visit and add additional information and examples to enhance your written entry as well as show them around your business (if applicable).
If you are selected for a site visit, this means you are a finalist in one or more categories!
2500 words maximum – including the Business Summary
IMPORTANT:
Businesses that exceed the word limit will be ineligible to win and award. The number of words per criteria 1 - 5 are just a guide. Business entrants may allocate more words to a particular criteria than another but please be aware that all criteria carry the same weight when judges score your entry.
- Provide a general overview of your business
TIPS
- Assume judges do not know your business. Explain your vision for the business and your employees.
- What is your point of difference versus your competition
- Please note: The judging panel will not look at your website in marking your entry
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Business Achievements (400-450 words)
Describe your:
- Business achievements over the last 3 years
- Sustainability and environmental initiatives and accomplishments
- Innovative practices you have introduced
NOTE: Do NOT state actual results in $’s, use percentage (%) terms
TIPS
- Awards
- Organisational restructures
- Changes to your costs and expenses
- Revenue generation
- Capital expenditure
- Financial achievements
- How do you measure against industry competition
- New employees
Innovation
TIPS
- *Innovation – examples of new growth, products or services
*An innovation is the implementation of a new or significantly improved product (goods or service), or process, a new marketing method, or a new organisational method in business practices, workplace organisation or external relations
Clever & creative sustainable and environmental practices
TIPS
Describe any efforts to:
- Make your power or lighting more efficient and/or use clean energy;
- Manage or conserve water more efficiently;
- Reduce, reuse and/or recycle your waste;
- Produce or supply goods or services which achieve positive environmental outcomes e.g. reduce carbon emissions, are energy efficient, reduce waste, reduce waste use);
- Track the benefits of your environmental activities (e.g. costs savings, carbon emissions reductions, reductions in water use, improved staff/customer satisfaction, increased awareness among staff/customers/suppliers);
- Engage with staff and/or the community on sustainability and environmental practices through committees/meetings (e.g. education programs about the local impacts of climate change, encouraging the community to adopt sustainable practices);
- Engagement and influence with your suppliers, contractors and partners to reduce waste, conserve water and save energy;
- Describe the processes, including training, for your business to achieve the environmental and/or sustainability outcomes you’ve achieved.
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Marketing (400-450 words)
Describe your approach to:
- Marketing (including digital marketing)
- How you engage your target market
TIPS
- Target markets for your products and services
- Make sure you show that you have a coordinated approach (informal/formal)
- If you can show success – campaigns
- What media advertising do you do
- Sponsorship
- Apprenticeships/traineeships
- Donations
- eMarketing
- Online
- Plan, do, check, act
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Customer Service (400-450 words)
Describe your approach to:
- Customer service
- How your business addresses inclusiveness and accessibility
- How your business addresses corporate social responsibility
TIPS
- What is your customer service philosophy?
- How do you/your staff do it, examples?
- How do you manage quantitative measurements?
- Show examples of improvement
- Guest surveys and feedback
- Cultivate service standards
- Effective management
- Staff recognition
- External & internal operational audits
- Handling of customer complaints
- Cultivate customer loyalty
- Provide examples
- How do you seek feedback and if so what do you do with it?
- How do you measure performance?
- How do you deal with unhappy clients? Provide an example of a time you turned an unhappy client into a happy one.
- How do you acknowledge positive feedback?
TIPS
- Accessibility and inclusiveness information
TIPS
- Physical accessibility within your place of business
- Social Inclusion policies
- Accessible information available to your customer
TIPS
- Describe the corporate social responsibility practices you engage in to support your community
TIPS
- Who do your support?
- Which specific groups are you aligned with?
- Social inclusion within your workplace
- Corporate citizenship – support of local community, traineeships, apprenticeships, local suppliers purchases
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People and Culture (400-450 words)
- Outline your business strategies
- Describe your practices to support a healthy workplace culture
Human Resources
TIPS
- Describe your culture – elaborate how that is embodied into your organisation
- Describe your management structure
- Communication
- Recruitment processes / Strategy
- Staff training and development, individual development. Give details – amount of training in house, external, mandated, regulatory
- Monitoring performance and performance reviews
- Staff incentives, benefits and rewards, work functions, engagement with staff
- Health and wellbeing
- Duty of care to employees, customers and neighbours
- OH&S policies, procedures, committee, meetings, bullying, harassment & privacy
- Emergency & fire Policies, procedures & training
- Hazard signage
- WorkCover strategies
- Position descriptions & employment agreements
- Real life examples more beneficial (Can be extended on at site visit if required)
- Describe the policies you have in place to support a healthy workplace. What policies are in place to support a healthy culture and leadership? How staff are made aware of them?
Health Promoting Workplace
TIPS
- Describe how you communicate and model your commitment to health and wellbeing for employees
- How is management involved with health and wellbeing? How do they communicate with staff?
- Explain how your workplace provides activities to support health and wellbeing in one or more of the following areas; physical activity, alcohol, smoking, healthy eating, skin cancer, injury prevention, sexual health, oral health?
- Are resources committed to health and wellbeing programs (e.g. staffing, programs, budgets)?
- Describe how you assess the benefits to your employees and workplace
- Has your workplace assessed the health and wellbeing needs of its workers?
- Has your workplace evaluated or measured any past or present health and wellbeing programs?
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Finance (400-450 words)
- Outline your financial management
- Outline your risk strategies and practices
- Firstly, we do NOT want to see any confidential data!
Do NOT state actual results in $’s, use percentage (%) terms
TIPS
- What are your financial management procedures
- Do you meet with your accountant/financial controller regularly?
- Do you set KPI’s for your business? Are they measured continuously?
- Do you use an accounting computer system?
- How do you control you debtors/creditors? Do you know your lock up days?
- Budgeting process
- Cash flow management
- Stock control
- Profit
- Debt management
- Re-investment
- Capital expenditure
- Minimisation of Risks – may include:
Competitors |
Personal property security legislation compliance |
Market shifts |
Personal credit card information |
Supply chain loss |
Fraud/Theft |
Staff skills shortages |
Insurances (property & personal) |
Leasing of premises |
OH&S management |
Information Technology |
Data storage, security and recovery |
90 minutes total, 60 mins presentation, 10 mins workplace tour, 20 mins judge questions
If your written entry receives a score of 375 or more, you may have the opportunity to present to the judges at a site visit and add additional information and examples to enhance your written entry as well as show them around your business (if applicable).
- The top 50 entrants get a site visit and are considered finalists.
- Site visit scores count towards 50% of final score.
- A minimum of two judges will attend your site visit
- Provide evidence of what you have submitted in your written entry.
- You must address criteria in order 1-5
- Showing the judges around your workplace can be useful to increase their understanding of your entry
- Judges require the final 20 minutes; asking specific questions relating to your entry/presentation.
*Scores for written entry and site visit will be combined and averaged to determine your final score.