Anyone in the organisation can nominate someone for an award, and it’s a really lovely way to say thank you, or to let someone know you’re loving their work.

This year we’ve made a few changes to how things will be done. Please make sure you check out the rules and read through the categories before you nominate.

 A new way to nominate 

This year, you can nominate someone by filling out one of our nomination forms. No more video, emails and voice notes nominations! The forms will ask you to write about how your nominee meets the award criteria. Please make sure you write enough detail in each box for the judges to make a decision: remember, it’s up to you to tell them why the person you’re nominating should win.

Nominations that aren’t detailed, for example, if they’re just one sentence, won’t be submitted to the judges. We’ve had some of these in the past, and it means the judges don’t have enough to go on to make their decision.

The categories

This year you’ll be able to nominate someone in one of eight categories.

 The Star of the Year Award – judged by our panel of last year’s winners and our directors 

A Star of the Year award will be given to:

• one Star of the Year from Central Services
•  one Star of the Year from Shared Lives
•  one Star of the Year from Families and Communities; and
• because our PSS team is made of lots of support workers who do such a vital role providing frontline support, this year we’ve created a new Star of the Year category especially for support workers. So instead of nominating support workers for Families and Communities Star of The Year, you can now nominate them in their very own Star of The Year category.

Our Star of the Year Award for Central Services, Families and Communities (except support workers) and Shared Lives will go to someone who has:

• worked brilliantly with others; and
• gone above and beyond to make a difference to someone we support, their team or the organisation.

• leads by example, putting their all into what they do; and
• has made a difference to the people they support, their team or the way the service works.

This is the award for that person who’s big-hearted, determined, genuine, professional and open-minded through and through. Tell the judges how the person you’re nominating lives each of our values.

This award is for someone who has:

• gone out of their way to help make PSS a more welcoming place to be;
•  made sure someone feels like they belong at PSS;
• made changes to how they do things to be more inclusive; and/or
• shown commitment to learning how they can be more inclusive and help people belong.

We’ll give this award to someone who:

• worked closely with people we support to make a positive difference to their life or to the services we offer;
•  supported people who use our service to have a voice at PSS and/or in their community; and/or
•  pushed the boundaries to support people to do what they love, despite any challenges that came their way.

You don’t have to be a manager or team leader to win this award – anyone can be a leader, even if it’s not in your job title. This award is for someone who:

• creates a positive environment at work;
• is caring and looks out for others;
• has been brave enough to try new things, solved a problem or made improvements to what their team does; and
• lives by their values.

You must be able to explain in detail how the person you’re nominating meets the award criteria and tell us in your nomination form.

You can make nominations in as many categories as you like, but you can only nominate one person for each of the four Star of The Year Awards, so choose your nominee wisely.

You can nominate the same person for more than one award (for example, you can nominate the person you nominated for Star of The Year for another award, too).

Shared Lives carers can’t be nominated for Brilliant Awards, and any nominations for carers won’t be passed to the judges.

Volunteers, including peer supporters, can’t be nominated for Brilliant Awards (we have Volunteer Awards instead), and any nominations for volunteers or peer supporters won’t be passed to the judges.If your nomination leads to the person you nominate winning the award, you will be asked  to record your nomination on video for the ceremony.

Shared Lives carers can only nominate PSS staff members for the Pride of PSS Award – and they must use the form. Any nominations we get from carers that don’t use the form or are for other categories won’t be passed to the judges.

Nominations must be sent in on or before Friday 28th February.

Please note: nominations that don’t meet the criteria or that don’t follow these rules won’t be submitted to the judges.
Judging

This year we’ve got a host of different judges whose job it will be to pick out the winners in each category.

As usual, we’ll also have our judging panel made up of award winners from previous years.

When we send the nominations on to the judges, we’re going to remove the names of the people who made the nomination. This means that the judges’ decisions will be based on what you write in your nominations alone: they won’t know who made the nomination.

When will The Brillies happen? 

In the past, we’ve hosted The Brillies in December or January, but since there’s usually so much going on around that time, we’ve made the decision to move The Brillies to be at the end of the financial year (April) rather than the end of the calendar year. Like last year, we’ll be doing it on Zoom so as many of us as possible can join in and find out who’s won.

Any questions? 

Drop us a line: thebrillies@pss.org.uk.