The Be Inspired Business Awards, The BIBAs, has received more than 650 applications from companies across all sectors and sizes for the 19 prize categories and is now in the process of sifting the entries ahead of its interview stages.
Jamie Griffiths, Content Director for the North West’s number one commercial radio station, Smooth Radio North West, said he was looking forward to meeting the finalists for the Start-Up Business of the Year category which Smooth is sponsoring.
Due to restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, The BIBAs will host all its interviews using teleconferencing rather than hosting face-to-face interviews and it has cancelled its second round of judging, The BIBAs on Tour, where it sends its second judges to visit finalists at their premises.
He said: “The BIBAs judging sessions are always an inspirational experience and after the 12 months that businesses in Lancashire have had, I have no doubt this year will be no exception.
“It will be a different experience doing the interviews virtually, but I am confident we will hear the passionate stories of innovation that businesses have shown.
“I would urge every business who is speaking with The BIBAs’ judges to do give it their all to show everyone about the great things they and their people have been doing.”
There are more than 90 Lancashire business leaders signed up to judge the awards’ categories, they will judge between eight and 12 businesses over a two-day period.
Following the closure of The BIBAs’ application window last Friday, the awards will use a unique bench-marking criteria to select which applicants go through the interview stages.
The criteria was developed by Lancaster University Management School to benchmark the entries on an international level.
It follows a research project that aligned the BIBAs award judging infrastructure with America’s top business awards, The Stevie’s, the European Business Awards and the Queen’s Awards for Enterprise here in the UK.
All applications are eligibility checked to ensure they meet all the entry criteria of the BIBAs before they are benchmarked against the criteria before progressing to the interview stage.
For full details on the awards judging process, visit www.thebibas.co.uk.