How we built our own awards

It is said that the Customer is Always Right. 
 
While that adage may hark back to an earlier era, what we HAVE strongly believed since our earliest days is that the Customer, or Client in our parlance, is always Special. 
 
Our clients are indeed special. Primarily small and medium businesses and start-ups, they are folks for whom every penny counts. Every hire is an important one, a business critical one. They have scant leeway for missed opportunities and for wrong hiring decisions. They are frugal and growth-chasing, both at the same time.
 
And we are filled with gratitude that these relentlessly driven people, founders and the key decision-makers of their companies, have decided to put their faith in us, another small business, offering a novel way of hiring and from an unusual talent pool. 
 
Yes, our models are highly beneficial, our pool has fire in its belly and experience to back that heat, but going against the grain is never easy, right?
 
But they are Entrepreneurs - Visionaries - Pioneers, by definition and design. 
 
We stand for them, we are them. So why should we not celebrate them?
 
And that’s why we started FlexiAwards, a big idea by a small company. To hero the folks who dare to dream, who take chances, on themselves and others. 
 
                                                                                

What’s in it for us

It would be ingenuous for us to not mention that we also stood to gain immensely from this. 
 
It had all the usual benefits of a marketing campaign that drives awareness and credibility, while also having the added advantage of being shareable. Social media gold. It had the potential to get folks talking about us, about flexibility in hiring across multiple roles, about hiring women professionals returning to work. 
 
What was not to love?
 
And did it get us those results? Yes. The campaign did exceedingly well on engagement metrics for the duration it was on (all of 5 weeks). 
 
Most importantly, it created goodwill with and for our clients and it helped others in their networks see that it was possible to hire flexible talent for core and operational roles, to hire experienced people in ways that didn't break the bank. It role-modeled certain behaviors like creating positive work environments, treating your teams well, rewarding them for work done, and so on.
 
It was truly an idea that had multiple wins in store for its multitudinous stakeholders. 

How we went about it

It came to us in one of our fortnightly drumbeat meetings for B2B marketing, and there was no looking back. Each of us were infected by the idea of creating something that stood for our vision. 
 
The first step was to figure out who or what we would award, the categories they would fall under. I have personally always felt deeply grateful to our earliest believers, those who hired remote talent before that word became part of daily business lexicon, who came with the belief that hiring mothers was good for business. 
 
So the first category had to be of these pioneers, who had been working with us since long. We called them the FlexiPioneers. 
 
                                                                            
 
The second mindset we are trying to change is the traditional notion that flexi work is only for certain kinds of jobs, primarily design and content. When we entered this space, the vocabulary for non-traditional work centered around “gig” and we felt the need to expand it to become “flexible”. The term gig is a subset of the wider range and types of jobs that are possible to do under flexible, and include those that are actual on-going roles and not just projects. Our biggest verticals are Sales and Digital Marketing, and across both, our clients hire professionals who are exactly like their other team members, except they work for fewer hours and from their own spaces. 
 
So we wanted to award those who had caught onto this phenomena early on, and who had hired from us across multiple functions. We called them the FlexiChampions. 
 
                                                                               
 
It needs to be said here that this time we primarily used our own data to identify the winners. But in the years to come we aim to bolster that with other sources of intelligence. It was, after all, our first time handing out awards :)
 
The third category had to be of those who are ecosystem builders. Those who are quick to refer a service or a product they have had a good experience with, to the benefit of both the company that is receiving that tip-off and the one whose offering is being recommended. Selflessly, to no benefit for themselves, except as engagement in a verbal contract where entrepreneurs help entrepreneurs. 
 
We culled the data out and I was pleasantly surprised to see that many of our clients had been referring us to others. We decided to call them the FlexiCheerleaders.
 
The next category is one of my favorites. Through all our interactions with our clients: through our Business Development Managers of course, but also through the other channels we run with them, including our Spotlight series where we shine the light on their products or the Webinar series where we bring their experiences and learning to others; through all these interactions, a few stand out. 
 
I have had multiple folks in my team regale me with stories of some of our most generous clients, who go out of their way to create a positive work culture, who prioritize building organizations with empathy. Who believe in positive reinforcement and the power of motivation. Who treat their flexi team members the same as all their team members. 
 
So, needless to say, we decided to award them. We called them the FlexiLeaders. 
 
                                           
 
And finally, we had our partners. The ones who toil day in and day out to help other start-ups thrive. Who work endlessly to find value partners for their portfolio companies, among other ways that they build them towards growth. We have had some great relationships and successes coming from our partners, and we want to award them for being such pillars of the ecosystem. 
 
                                                                                
 

In conclusion

We got many kind words of appreciation from our clients, and that is absolutely the fuel that drives a company forward. It energized our team members and us, and made us even firmer in our goal to help these amazing and inspiring people grow their businesses. 
 
And finally, a heartfelt note of gratitude to our clients who may be reading this: Thank you for trusting us with your talent needs, for something so core to your business and growth. We will be forever grateful and inspired, and pay it forward every chance we get. 
 
As for the awards, we will be back next year, bigger and better.