hat makes an Optimas Award winner?
Winners Achieve Tangible Business Results
All of the winning organizations share some characteristics. In each company:
- Workforce management strategies help the organization achieve its business goals.
- Workforce management leadership understands the business issues surrounding the organization and respond accordingly.
Workforce Management’s goal is to show how leaders in the profession are guiding their companies to greater success through the astute management of an organization’s most valuable corporate asset--its employees. The Optimas winners are workforce management leaders who have identified critical business issues in their organizations and responded with initiatives that are key to the company’s success.
How Optimas Awards Candidates Are Identified
First, workforce management professionals nominate their own programs and initiatives. The nomination form must be submitted to be considered for an Optimas Award. While many of these initiatives begin with the leaders in human resources,
eligible entries can begin elsewhere in the company, provided that they involve
significant participation by the organization’s workforce management leadership
(and that can include the CEO, the CFO or COO).
In addition, Workforce Management editors collect information to identify other organizations that have the potential to be winners. The data come from numerous sources: newspapers, business magazines, books, conferences and events, broadcast media, academics, previous winners, consultants and academics. Workforce Management also looks to the suggestions made by its Optimas Advisory Board.
How Optimas Award Winners Are Chosen
In the fall, the Workforce Management editorial staff meets to determine the finalists. The editors use the following criteria to determine the winners:
Is there a clearly identified business issue?
Are there quantifiable data that help clarify this business issue?
Is there a strong workforce management component to the solution of the business issue?
Does the program clearly address the business issue?
What are the quantifiable business results of the program?
What are the non-measurable results that still have a pay-off to the organization?
Does this initiative serve as a model for other organizations?
Does this program demonstrate how workforce management has an impact on the business results of the organization?
Has the program been in operation a minimum of two years?
Once the candidates have been reviewed, the editors narrow the field to three finalists in each category. Then the review starts anew. Through telephone interviews with key participants in the organization, a review of additional materials and other processes, the editors learn as much as they can about the finalists. In the end, they reconvene to select the 10 winners.
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