This year’s Culture Pioneer Awards is officially open for entries! We’re ready and waiting to celebrate the next cohort of organisations and people professionals making meaningful strides to build thriving workplace cultures.

Could you be our next Culture Pioneer?

Being recognised as a Culture Pioneer will show the world you genuinely care about your people and the environment they work in.

Why you should enter the awards

The HRZone and TrainingZone teams are passionate about progress. That’s why our jointly-run Culture Pioneers Awards programme is not just about celebrating the ‘best in show’ cultures’. We’re geared up to recognise the individuals, teams and organisations fighting the good fight and persisting with an ongoing culture change journey.

In a climate where the expectations of employees and candidates are fast-evolving, being recognised as a Culture Pioneer will show the world you genuinely care about your people and the environment they work in.

Everyone's invited!

No matter the size of your budget, resources or initiatives, if you are making progress with your culture efforts, you have a good chance of making the shortlist.

Does this sound like you? Then nothing should stop you from entering our awards.

To support inclusivity and accessibility, the awards are free to enter. So don’t miss this opportunity to be recognised for your hard graft and join our community of like-minded organisations and people professionals passionate about thriving cultures.

Our 2023 categories

This year’s awards programme has four categories for you to choose from. Each category is then broken down into two subcategories based on organisation’s size (1-99 employees or 100+ employees).

Simply decide which area you and/or your team excels in and get started. You can enter as many of the categories as you like (remember they are all free to enter), as long as you craft each entry to suit the respective category.

Brand

The Culture Pioneer Brand Award is for organisations that are committed to nurturing a working culture that represents their brand identity.

If you’re looking to showcase your organisation’s approach to creating (or sustaining) a great place to work – where company values are lived and breathed – then this category is for you.

Wellbeing

The Culture Pioneer Wellbeing Award is for those who are consistently evolving their employee wellbeing strategy and taking a holistic approach to support the mental, emotional, financial and social needs of their workforce.

The wellbeing category gives you the opportunity to demonstrate how you are taking the responsibility of wellbeing seriously to create sustainable improvements for all employees, no matter their circumstances.

Inclusion

The Culture Pioneer Inclusion Award is for individuals, teams and businesses that are creating meaningful, sustainable improvements in workplace inclusion and belonging.

If you and your organisation can demonstrate passion and commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, then this is your chance to show it.

Learning 

The Culture Pioneer Learning Award is for businesses that are cultivating a culture that proactively supports the way that their organisation learns, adapts and grows.

Entering the learning category will enable you to showcase your commitment to learning at an individual, team and organisational level, in a climate where skills development has never been more important.

We’re on a mission to galvanise organisations and business leaders into taking culture seriously.

Our 2023 Judges

Making up our judging panel is a talented group of industry experts tasked with selecting the finalists and winning entries for each category. Our 2023 judges include:

• Bruce Daisley, Workplace culture consultant, 2x Sunday Times Bestseller, ex-Twitter VP
• Perry Timms, No1 HR Most Influential and Chief Energy Officer of PTHR
• Laura Overton, award-winning industry analyst, learning changemaker and Cofounder of Emerging Stronger
• Prof. Emma Parry, Professor of Human Resource Management and Head of the Changing World of Work Group, Cranfield School of Management
• Shakil Butt, D&I Specialist and Founder of HR Hero for Hire Ltd.

Find out more about our full judging panel here.

Key dates

The closing deadline for entries is 15th September 23:59pm (BST). This may seem far off but, trust us, with the summer months ahead it will come around quickly, so we encourage you to get started on your entry soon. (You can always save your progress and log back in to work on your entry at any time before the deadline.)

Finalists will be announced on 22nd November, and our winners will be revealed at our in-person awards show in March 2024.

Show us what your culture is made of

We’re on a mission to galvanise organisations and business leaders into taking culture seriously. If this is something you and your organisation are passionate about too, we encourage you to enter the awards and join our movement.