Submitting a winning award entry: HPMA partnership award

Should we enter?

1. Does your initiative demonstrate the benefits of social partnership working?
2. Did it involve joint work between employers and trade unions from the outset?
3. Has your initiative made a real difference to staff experience/service delivery/patient care?

If your answer is yes to all three questions, then share your experience and good practice and submit an entry.

Entry checklist

You should include specific examples of how your initiative meets each award criterion and why it is worthy of the award. You’ll need:

• A clear description of your project, including rationale, context, objectives, planning and implementation.
• Clear examples showcasing genuine partnership working between employers and trade unions, not simply collaboration. Detail how employers, trade unions and any other relevant partners were brought together, the challenges they faced, and how these were overcome.
• An evaluation of the impact of your initiative. Detail how your initiative benefited patients and/or staff and provide quantitative and/or qualitative data where available.
• A section on the sustainability of your project, transferability, and lessons learnt.

Top tips

1. Prepare – allow sufficient time to prepare and submit your entry and familiarise yourself with the award criteria. Please note that submissions for 2024 have closed.
2. Keep it simple – write in plain English. Be clear and concise, avoid jargon, keep sentences short (15 to 20 words is a good average) and break longer sentences up with commas. Avoid sweeping generalisations and make every sentence count.
3. Keep to the word count limits and provide enough information for the judges to become familiar with the specific challenges faced, actions taken, and results or goals met.
4. Pay attention to grammar, spelling and punctuation – the judges are more likely to trust the information you supply if there are no spelling mistakes or errors.
5. Ensure results or statistics used in your entry have been verified.
6. Write your entry with partners – employers and trade unions should work together to prepare your entry, and both should be content with the final version.
7. Review your entry – ask others to read your entry before you submit it. It can be helpful to ask someone who was not directly involved in the work. An independent reviewer will not have detailed knowledge of the initiative and may suggest ways to make your entry stronger.

Inspiration

For inspiration, read Isle of Wight NHS Trust's 2023 winning case study  and read the case studies from the runners up.

• Devon Partnership NHS Trust worked with trade unions to transform their disciplinary, performance and grievance policies and procedures.
• Health and Social Care Northern Ireland worked in partnership to update their flexible working offer.
• Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust worked hard to bring about organisational change through partnership working.

Watch the HPMA webinar to meet the finalists webinar to learn more about our winner and runners up.

Finally… good luck! We look forward to hopefully seeing you at the 2024 HPMA Excellence in people awards ceremony later this year.