It seems to be a world-wide phenomenon – the proliferation of congratulation. As American journalist and editor Joanne Lipman once said: “Hollywood has its Oscars. Television has its Emmys. Broadway has its Tonys. And advertising has its Clios. And its Andys, Addys, Effies and Obies. And 117 other assorted awards. And those are just the big ones.”

If the office homogenises us, it never diminishes our desire to stand on a podium and wave a trophy, to tearfully thank God, and to be crowned the lower North Island’s top grey-suited, grey-haired; middle- aged, middle-management practitioner of the year. Far be it to take recognition away from those that deserve it, but have we reached a critical mass for awards?

It doesn’t help when you look at the accolades afforded to quintessential evil corporation Enron, which include the title ‘America’s Most Innovative Company’ for six years running. Closer to home, ING was named ‘New Zealand Fund Manager of the Year’ in October 2008 after $400 million of investor funds were frozen in March of the same year.

National Sponsorship Manager at Westpac Mark Graham compares business awards to the heart foundation tick as a mark of credibility.

“If someone has won an award, and has been put through a process and judged against their com- petitors and peer evaluated and all those kinds of things – hey they must have actually done quite a few things right here. So we can feel comfort about them being acknowledged as a winner – that says something.”

There have, of late, been questions asked by central government agencies about the value and place of our business awards. A report commissioned by New Zealand Trade and Enterprise for the Business Capability Partnership in 2004 found around 200 separate business awards programmes in New Zealand. “The proliferation of the award ‘industry’ is seen by many of the key stakeholders within the areas as both a positive issue, and a potentially damaging challenge,” the report says.

Positive, because awards encourage New Zealanders to identify with the concept of celebration, and because they showcase role models outside of the sporting area. But potentially damaging because the number of awards has grown in an ad-hoc way, because there has been little integration across sectors and industries, and because there is little national planning.

Graham says the situation with inconsistent national judging criteria has at times produced unworthy winners of some awards.

“There was quite a focus on trying to bring some consistency across how awards are judged, for ex- actly the point we were just talking about: inconsistencies. Suddenly people are given kudos when in fact, jeepers! If you really sort of looked a little bit deeper into the business there is no way they should have actually got that award,” he says.

New Zealand Business Excellence Foundation CEO Mike Watson sits on the Business Capability Partnership and the Capability New Zealand Council and says personally, he feels awards in New Zealand are not stacking up.

“Let’s face it: a lot of the awards in New Zealand are just rubbish,” he says. “They don’t ask many questions, they don’t give any decent actionable feedback to the applicants.”

Watson, as part of the Business Capability Partnership, was heavily involved in the development of a condensed version of the internationally recognised Baldrige judging criteria for use in judging New Zealand business awards. The Baldrige criteria break down judging criteria under the headings of leadership, business planning, customers and stakeholders, information and analysis, workforce, project management, and business results.

Watson says many New Zealand awards are not so thorough.

“What we were trying to do was institute or implement a robust criteria which we had developed; implement robust evaluation and judging processes so that the right people were winning – not the guy that you play golf with sort of thing,” he says.

While winning leaves you feeling warm and undeniably fuzzy, is the sheer number of awards given out nowadays really constructive? Or is even thinking such thoughts a manifestation of our tall poppy tendencies? Business is a fickle game, as evidenced so well by the little arrows up and down on the TV news every night. Every year there are new awards with new agendas and new categories popping up, new ways to pat each other on the back.

All this begs the question: are the business awards given out nowadays worth less than the frosted plastic trophies they are screen printed on?

The big business winner

In her haste to retort, former awards winner Diane Foreman cuts off the question about which awards she will be entering this year: “definitely no more awards”.

“Last year was a hard year for awards because we entered the Entrepreneur of the Year, we entered the NZTE awards and we did a couple of awards in Asia, plus we do the Ice Cream Awards. So there were five different awards processes going on and that was a big year for us and we have decided that we won’t do that again. It’s very time consuming and you take the focus off the business and you put the focus onto the competition. Our business needs our focus.”

Foreman is the Managing Director of Emerald Foods, the company that carries, among others, the New Zealand Natural, Movenpick and Killincy Gold brands. They have had a good year. Foreman was named 2009 New Zealand Entrepreneur of the Year and Emerald won the Best Business Operating Internationally – $10m to $50m category in the International Business Awards. Foreman is awards-wary though, saying the realities of business dictate she takes each year as it comes and judges her own business success by her bottom line.

“You can only ever judge yourself on your latest budget, and I am expecting that I have as many down years as I have up.”

In an awards environment where it is not uncommon for achievement to be further cross classified by gender, ethnicity or geography, Foreman is clear on one particular point: she loathes gender-based awards.

“I hate it…I think we are all on a level playing field, and while we promote business women awards, you are never going to be on the same ground as men. I don’t like the gender split, I think if you are good enough to compete you are good enough to compete against.”

Foreman has the rare experience of seeing both sides of the fence, having been both a judge and an entrant in Entrepreneur of the Year. She rates the role behind the table as far more enjoyable.

“Being a judge was amazing and the exposure to bright, young creative minds was incredible,” she says. “Being a participant was really harrowing, because you didn’t get that kind of exposure to everybody else, you got to meet them a couple of times but you didn’t get to go really deep inside their business, which as a judge you did.

“It was very lonely. You are there and the spotlight is on you and you can either win it or lose it.” Any award, she says, is ultimately what you make of it. The first one she can remember being part of was “a hundred years ago” when a staff member won Hairdresser of the Year at the salon she was a partner in.

“We plastered it over our whole window, we just made it so huge, we took ads in the local paper, we did everything.”

Foreman speaks of her disappointment upon recently coming across a winner of the same award complaining of inadequate post-award support and recognition.

“It is an opportunity for you to use it in your marketing; it’s what you do with it that counts.”

She agrees an award is like a mark of authentication, and says she found it good for attracting franchisees, bankers and other professionals to the business because of the sense of confidence a thumbs up from independent judges instils.

“We haven’t got any new clients but we haven’t been actively seeking any, but it has been a mark of respect.”

While the benefits to her business are more qualitative than measurable, she is under no illusions as to where the benefits of awards lie for the companies that sponsor them.

“Well, obviously they are doing it for their own branding, they would be doing it because it helps their brand and it is a passive way of marketing themselves – the whole ‘tie yourselves with a winner’ thing. So obviously that is why people are doing it: it’s the whole marketing ploy.”

The small business winner

Casey Martin’s dilemma is: How do you market a funeral business – but seriously – what do you do? Do you go put business cards in old people’s homes? Do you give out pens? It’s an interesting dilemma faced by the funeral industry and even tougher for the smaller players: to be recognised as a business when it’s something most people don’t like to think of as a money-making venture.

Taranaki Regional Business Ex- cellence Awards Judge Paul Fifield understands well the challenges faced by one such small business, Eagar’s Funeral Service. He and his panel judged them as the winner of Best Small Business category of the Taranaki awards in 2008 and 2009. For owner Casey Martin, the awards have helped to create ‘top of mind’ recognition for the family business, which employs three staff.

“Most people only use a funeral director two, maybe three times in their lifetimes and we can’t exactly have a sale if we are quiet. So it is that top of mind stuff and because we push the fact that we have been recognised as business leaders in our community, it has raised our profile,” she says.

Martin was pressed to enter for the first time in 2007. She didn’t win that first year but saw the experience as an opportunity for some professional advice and feedback in running the business she bought from her parents’ estate after her father was killed and her mother died of cancer.

“In the first year I was looking for a free business review and that information to help me grow. Because you find that in small business you can get caught up in the way you do things and sometimes people don’t tell you a different way, you don’t even think of it, and it is just being open to other people’s suggestions.”

Martin took her staff to both the awards ceremonies as a way to recognise the team effort. On a personal level, the most poignant recognition of her business’ success came from a previous judge.

“I had a congratulations letter from a lady who was my judge the very first time around and in between her judging us, her daughter died and we looked after the funeral. For me that was the best recognition, she came into our business, she saw what we did, the passion we had, and the ultimate compliment was to use our service.”

Martin says business awards need to recognise the Davids as much as the Goliaths.

“We need to be recognising other areas, the likes of Taranaki and Manawatu; we are not Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch. There are some very important companies and very important businesses all over the country and you do get a little bit frustrated sometimes when you only hear about the big boys.”

The sponsor

As far as sponsorship goes, Westpac is heavily into awards. They sponsor the 15 Regional Business Excellence Awards, as well as the Halberg Awards for sport, and national industry awards in tourism, franchising, retail, agriculture and the restaurant industry. They also sponsor numerous categories in other awards ceremonies.

With so many ways to spend marketing dollars nowadays, Westpac National Sponsorship Manager Mark Graham says they have persisted with awards because of the association with, and celebration of, excellence – as well as more commercial motives.

“If they [winners] are not a customer we might try very hard for them to become a customer and look, that is how it works. We want to be associated with the best and this an opportunity for us to work closely with some very successful companies, and that is another fantastic benefit for us.”

Graham is familiar with comments about too many awards, but points out that in recessionary times he would have thought more people would be eager to celebrate and learn from others’ success.

“Let’s put them on a pedestal, let’s talk to them and find out what they have been doing that we could perhaps learn off,” he says.

The judge

Taranaki Business excellence awards Judge Paul Fifield says being a business award judge is like being a nosey parent.

“I don’t know about you, but my parents don’t know what I earn or anything like that, but we are just saying to these people ‘just show us everything you’ve got’. We do it without blinking almost. It is probably quite unnerving.”

Fifield says he believes the unique fingerprint of New Zealand business, in terms of our traditional strengths in the primary industry and prevalence of small business, is under-represented by our business awards.

“I think at the moment we can’t do enough [awards]. I look at the primary industry – it just doesn’t get any pats on the back, yet without it the country would be dead in the water. I look at the SMEs in particular – they represent probably 80 per cent of business in New Zealand, they just don’t get thanked for what they do.”

He says one of the biggest challenges in judging is with the mix of company sizes and industries within categories. “It is never apples with apples, rather apples with pineapples – especially when it comes to the Supreme Award winner. To me that is a fundamental flaw in the awards at the moment. I don’t know how you compare a one- man band, mum and dad business with a medium business. I hate to say it but it is going to be near impossible for a small firm to win the Supreme [Award] – it sort of, I don’t know, bastardises the whole process.”

Fifield doesn’t subscribe to the less is more school of thought, saying they took a firm stance in all the speeches delivered at all the various Business Excellence Awards around the country last year: tough economic times warrant an increased celebration of success.

“I don’t think we can do enough patting on the back…we have got to look for opportunities to really get in behind these people.”

The organiser

John Dow is involved with organising both the WELLYS and the Gold Awards. He does it because he believes the business community is seriously undervalued for what it does: providing employment and livelihoods, and generating the income that funds the workings of society.

He says celebration should come before feedback.

“I believe that business awards should be primarily a night of cel- ebration and acknowledgement of the achievements and innovation within a region’s business community; a public way of thanking these hard working risk takers rather than an onerous and laborious process of ‘checkin up’ on people’s businesses. In my opinion if business people want good advice or support they can engage a professional consult- ant or advisory firm and do it in a confidential and considered manner in their own chosen way.”

The Critic

Ceo of the new Zealand Business Excellence Foundation Mike Watson sits on the Business Capability Partnership and the New Zealand Capability Council. Personally, he feels we are heavy- handed with business awards in New Zealand.

“I think there are far too many awards in New Zealand. I think a lot of them are of dubious benefit in terms of their process for evaluation.”

He says the fragmented nature of the awards industry is some- thing you see in many areas of New Zealand business, and has resulted in an enormous variance in the calibre of awards. “I won’t mention names – prominent awards programmes ask sort of half a dozen inane questions and then judge, and then make an award when there is absolutely no rigour to it. The awards, a lot of them are just celebrations of business. The ones who win, in no way are they necessarily the best business there. They win the thing for a variety of reasons.”

He says awards should be in place to not only celebrate excellence, but also to build the capability of applicants and businesses.

“If they are not there to do that then – what the devil – what is the point of them?”