Award deadlines coming up (scroll down below for all awards organised by industry) 

With the festive season upon us and the year drawing to a close, the world of awards is slightly quieter – but there are still plenty of trends emerging amongst upcoming business award deadlines. A lot of great CSR Awards like The Global Good Awards and The BITC Responsible Business Awards are open (or will be imminently), while some important HR Awards are just creeping onto the horizon like The Princess Royal Training Awards and The HR Excellence Awards. Special mention too for the prestigious BQF UK Excellence Awards with its 21st December deadline fast approaching, but for now my focus will be on two big themes:

IT awards

There are some very big awards in the IT industry coming up, mentioned below, but for greater detail can I suggest checking out our colleague Emma’s recent article on the best International IT Awards to enter.

First up we have The Cybersecurity Excellence Awards. These international awards have a deadline of 31st Dec and have six categories for cybersecurity companies, a whopping 47 cybersecurity product/service categories and seven cybersecurity professional categories for individuals. 

Now in their 11th year, The European IT & Software Excellence Awards are all about software development, IT and Telecoms solutions provision. As the name suggests, they welcome entries from across Europe, but are mostly UK-focused. They tend to attract the smaller providers, but last year Microsoft and BNP Paribas picked up awards, proving the big brands are welcome too. Deadline here is 25th January 2019. 

Hosted by The Corporate IT Forum since 2004, The Real IT Awards (RITAs) are aimed at UK IT teams within bigger companies. These well-established awards focus on teamwork and projects. The deadline for entering is 28th January, and they comprise six ‘Team of the Year’ categories, nine Project categories, five Innovation categories and one ‘Special Achievement’ award.

UK-based ‘The Techies’ by Techworld have grown in popularity from their early days, and seemed popular last year, but this year they are yet to open for entries. The deadline will probably be early Feb. Categories include Best Use of AI for Enterprise, Best Place to Work in Tech and Best Use of DevOps. 

Pensions awards 

In order to enter The UK Pensions Awards you will need to register by 14th December, while the actual submission deadline is 21st January 2019. They include categories for individuals, consultancies, advisers, pension providers, fund managers and innovations. Big winners here include the ‘Third-Party Administrator of the Year’ award. 

The Money Marketing Awards are organised in the UK by Money Marketing magazine and are officially just about intermediaries, including mortgages, protection and wealth management, but they have a very strong emphasis on pensions. Despite the name, they are not about marketing. Deadline 7th December. 

The European Pensions Awards have a deadline of 22nd February. The categories here focus on funds, fund managers and fund management companies – basically awards for the people that make your money grow.

Next up is another UK-only scheme The FT Pension and Investment Provider (PIPA) Awards, this time with a deadline of 23rd February. Here the categories are very different, focusing on schemes and service providers. The most interesting categories include: Employee benefits consultant – Multi-employer DC provider – Third party administrator – Communication specialist. 

The Employee Benefits Awards are Boost’s most popular awards of the year – we have a long history of winning these for our clients. The current official deadline is 17th December, but you can expect a possible deadline extension. Categories include ‘Best Financial Wellbeing Strategy’, ‘Best Employee Share Schemes’ and ‘Benefits Team of the Year’. 

The Corporate Adviser Awards were previously a pre-Christmas scheme, but have moved their two deadlines significantly to early in the year. You have until 1st February for the Adviser and Health and Wellbeing categories, and 29th March for Provider categories.

Hopefully those award highlights have suitably whetted your appetite – I wish you the best of luck during the winter awards season. Below you will find all the awards in the next two months organised by industry sector. Remember, do please contact Boost if you need a helping hand entering any of these – our in-house team of experienced award writers have won over 1,100 awards and can increase your chances of a win significantly.

You can also sign up for our email deadline reminder service, so that the next two months of deadlines arrive in your inbox – completely free of charge. Handy, I think you will agree!  

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from everyone at Boost!