And the award for best awards goes to…

Robust, credible and able to drive standards across the sector. This was the vision for the reinvented ukactive Awards, and the reason for Proinsight’s appointment as delivery partner.

When UK fitness industry body ukactive rebranded its annual FLAME event, relaunching it as the Active Uprising Conference and ukactive Awards, it was with a clear goal in mind: to confer new weight and credibility onto both the event and the awards, positioning them as catalysts for industry-wide change – drivers of an Active Uprising throughout the sector, and with it across the country.

ukactive client services director Steven Scales explains: “With this ambition in mind, we had two primary challenges to address when it came to our awards. Firstly, we needed to make the total independence of the process evident to all, to reinforce the integrity of the results.

“We needed to go beyond simply celebrating the winners to also provide in-depth, actionable feedback for all entrants.”

Steven Scales, client services director, ukactive

“Equally importantly, if we wanted our awards to act as a driver of continual improvement across the sector, we needed to go beyond simply celebrating the winners to also provide in-depth, actionable feedback for all entrants. And that feedback needed to be based on consistent assessment criteria across all awards to allow us to set new benchmarks.”

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Setting the standards

All of this required expert support, so in 2019 Proinsight and Active IQ were brought on-board as delivery partners for the ukactive Awards.

For the facility-focused categories – awards such as Club/Centre of the Year – a new phase one online survey, built and managed by Proinsight, allowed members to rank their fitness facility. The resulting league table highlighted the top performers in each category – a shortlist of facilities that then progressed to phase two.

At this point, where in previous years facilities would each receive just one mystery shop, in 2019 Proinsight conducted three full mystery shops on each shortlisted facility: three digital, three in-person and three phone-based enquiries. The result: not only more robust results, but also far more valuable data to feed back to each site – and all for the same £195 awards entry fee as in previous years.

Meanwhile, the process for award categories that required a judging panel – Workplace Wellbeing Programme of the Year, for example, and Marketing Campaign of the Year – was also made more rigorous. After a phase one assessment of written applications by Active IQ, phase two – managed by Proinsight – introduced far more stringent requirements of the judges themselves. Out went manually completed paper forms that permitted one-word answers and that always needed chasing up; in came a bespoke online survey that set a minimum character count for all answers, and that required judges to input scores and feedback on the day. As well as making the process itself smoother, this also ensured every shortlisted entrant received genuinely valuable feedback to take back to their business.

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A true partnership

“It was a true partnership in which Proinsight really became an extension of our events team.”

Steven Scales, client services director, ukactive

Scales concludes: “The experience of working with Proinsight exceeded all expectations. It was a true partnership in which Proinsight really became an extension of our events team.

“The level of communication throughout the process, from planning to execution, was exceptional, as was Proinsight’s adaptability and willingness to create bespoke solutions around our very specific needs and awards criteria.”

He continues: “I also have to praise Proinsight’s commitment to the process, providing support for our events team throughout every judging day, as well as creating very thorough feedback reports – anything up to 40 pages – for every one of the approximately 140 award entrants.

“We will unquestionably be working with Proinsight on next year’s ukactive Awards.”