Nomination programmes are the crown jewels of employee recognition, but most organisations aren’t getting their full value.

Research from Awardco’s Center of Excellence shows that when recognition is delivered by senior leadership, it carries significantly more impact and can sustain engagement for up to a year after the moment has passed.

That’s the upside. But let’s be honest about what it takes to get to that moment when the CEO is presenting the Employee of the Year award on stage.

Behind the scenes, many nomination programmes are a heavy lift. They are time-consuming to manage, difficult to scale, and often held together by a mix of forms, spreadsheets, manual follow-ups, and the sheer grit of an HR leader.

Many organisations are still trying to run modern recognition on outdated strategies. If you’ve ever run one of these programmes, you know exactly what this looks like.

The reality of running nomination programmes

You launch a nomination programme for your company’s most prestigious award. Employees are encouraged to share success stories about their colleagues. Submissions begin coming in. At first, it feels like momentum is building.

Then the operational reality sets in:

• Nominations are collected through forms, emails, or shared documents
• Someone consolidates everything into a central spreadsheet
• Review committees are coordinated – with some people hard to loop in, and others insisting on being involved
• Leaders are asked to review raw, unstructured submissions in limited time
• Timelines begin to slip as you wait for everyone’s feedback

There’s friction at every step, and while all of this is happening, the employee experience is largely ignored.

From an employees’ perspective, they submit a nomination and then… nothing. No confirmation beyond a generic message. No visibility into what happens next. No sense of whether their effort mattered.

This is what I call the “black hole.”

What the “black hole” of nomination programme visibility is really costing you

The black hole isn't just an operational issue, it’s also a cultural one.

When nominations disappear into a hidden process, a few things happen:

• The nominee never sees the appreciation unless they happen to win
• The nominator doesn’t know if their message was ever read or valued
• Managers miss valuable insight into what their team members are doing well
• The organisation loses visibility into patterns of impact across teams and regions

As a practitioner, I’ve seen this firsthand. Once, while migrating historical nomination programme data into a new digital system, a colleague discovered she had been nominated for the company award three times over the previous few years, yet she had no idea. Those nominators took the time to write thoughtful, detailed recognition of her work, but none of it ever reached her.

That is a missed opportunity at every level. Those moments could have reinforced engagement, strengthened manager awareness, and contributed to a stronger culture of recognition over years of this employee’s tenure. Instead, these stories, data points, and words of encouragement were effectively lost.

Nomination programmes are an absolute goldmine of positive stories, but so many get left behind.

A different approach

This is where I’ll offer a controversial opinion. What I’m about to suggest isn’t how most nomination programmes are run today, but please don’t fall back on “the way we’ve always done it.”

So how might you actually capitalise on the full value of your nomination programme? Treat the nomination itself as a part of the experience. More specifically, the nominee gets notified straight away that they’ve been nominated, and they get to see what the nominator said about them. And their manager and team get to see it too. It’s a moment of celebration. 

You might be thinking … “Doesn’t that take away the surprise?” or “Isn’t this programme supposed to lead up to a big reveal moment?”

That’s fair, because it’s how most of us have seen these programmes work. 

But stick with me. Because in practice, that model is exactly where a lot of value is lost. 

In the programmes I’ve seen work best, the nomination itself becomes part of the recognition experience. 

Imagine this shift:

• Nominations don’t disappear into a black hole. They create value immediately. 
• The nominee receives immediate appreciation, and their manager gets instant insight into that person's impact.
• There’s a snowball effect. When people see others being nominated, they are inspired to add their own voices.
• There are more nominations overall (in my experience, this shift has created 3x nominations at two separate companies)
• Nominations are higher quality and more representative of your organisation.

You don’t lose the final reveal moment. That still matters. But it’s no longer the only moment when recognition happens.

It’s about realising the full return on your investment. No longer are you designing a programme that delivers impact at the very end to a small group of people. You’re capturing value throughout the process, in moments that would have otherwise been missed.

More people participate. More stories surface. Managers get better insight into their teams. Individuals get to experience a recognition moment that would have otherwise gone into a black hole. 

Making this work in practice

So, you’re sold on the idea of evolving your process, but you’re still thinking, but nomination programmes are still so much work. 

I can’t dispute that. However, they are one of the most powerful tools in your recognition strategy, so they’re well worth the effort. 

And the right platform can remove some of the administrative burden and make this approach scalable. Awardco’s new nomination functionality can help in many ways:

• Nominations can be visible as recognitions (when you want them to be) instead of disappearing into a black hole
• Workflows are structured and automated, reducing the administrative burden on HR and programme owners
• Review processes are streamlined, so leaders are evaluating clear, consistent information instead of raw inputs
• Data becomes actionable, helping organisations identify gaps, trends, and opportunities before the programme ends

Where to go from here

The truth is, even in a 'black hole' process, final award recipients still receive meaningful recognition. Recognition from senior leadership is powerful no matter how it’s delivered. 

So what kind of nomination programme does your organisation actually need?

In the next part of this series, we’ll break down different programme types, structures, and use cases so you can design something that fits your culture, rather than just replicating what you’ve seen elsewhere.

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