The ATD Excellence in Practice awards program recognizes results achieved through the use of practices and solutions from the entire scope of workplace talent development. ATD recognizes the accomplishments of applicants on two levels: Awards and Citations.

For organizations applying for the first time, the robust application can seem daunting, and as we gear up to launch our 2015 application we wanted to provide some helpful content directly from our 2013 award winners to help organizations prepare.

Below is a compilation of tips, tools, and advice from some of our 2013 Excellence in Practice winners, including Capgemini University, Fidelity Investments, IBM, and SuccessFactors, an SAP Company:

“Applying for awards makes you better, and the ASTD (ATD) Excellence in Practice Award is a terrific example of that. They ask probing questions that really test your mettle in terms of best practices for learning: what was the problem, how did you figure out the solution (and what other options did you consider but reject), which design choices did you make, and of course, what metrics did you use, how did you determine that these were the right things to measure, and what were your outcomes? If you’re doing award-winning work, answering these questions should be easy. If the questions are challenging you, that’s a great opportunity to see where the holes in your approach may be and to fill them. The level of detail required for this application is tough but commendable, and ultimately highly beneficial to any learning organization aiming to grow its impact.” – Jenny Dearborn, SuccessFactors, an SAP Company

"I think that a key thing was working on this as a team in order to get a broad perspective on how to tell our story. We also did not put this together in a short amount of time, but met several times over a couple of months to complete it. I think this was crucial in how our entry was crafted.  I would also say for the applicants to be as detailed as possible with their data/results of their training initiative/program.” – Sherry Cummings, Fidelity Investments 

Here are some other helpful tips that award winners agree on:    

• Plan enough time to complete the application thoroughly.

• Tell a story with the following components:

  • What issue did you identify?

  • How did you solve the issue?

  • What feedback did you receive?

  • What changes or updates based on the lessons learned did you make?

  • What are the solid business value results?

• Focus on the business issues at hand, rather than the design and development of your learning journey. While design, build, and deployment are very important in these submissions, they really need to revolve around the business objectives of the learning program.

• Go down to the grass roots level and get the evaluation data. It may require you to reach out to the trenches in the business - but that's where you will find the information that will really give you the success stories.  

• Evaluation built in the course should be business-centric rather than learning design-centric.

• Focus on how the course was designed for the different intended target audiences.

• A list of best practices and lessons learned are helpful for the reviewers to know how you will enhance the course in the future.          

For more information or to view last year’s application please visit the Excellence in Practice website. The 2015 application will open July 1, 2015.