Strategic Alignment Award

Last edited on 27 March 2013

Award Description & Focus

This Award recognises excellence in ensuring that the graduate scheme helps your organisation to achieve its strategic goals and is supported by excellent stakeholder engagement. An Award-winning entry will show a strong vision, which is directly focused on helping the organisation to overcome challenges and achieve strategic organisational goals.  It will also demonstrate active engagement with, and involvement of, a range of stakeholders. There should be two-way influencing and communication that is reviewed and monitored on a regular basis.

Award Assessment Criteria

  • Vision – Does the entry display a strong vision of how the graduate scheme helps deliver the business strategy?  Does this vision underpin all aspects of scheme design? Is there evidence of two-way influencing – ie the Graduate Team influences the stakeholders, as well as the stakeholders helping to shape the programme?
  • Innovation in Strategic Alignment – What was innovative about the approach you took to getting strategic alignment, which others could adopt or adapt? OR ● Best Practice – What does your best practice in strategic alignment look like?  What were the challenges you had to overcome to establish best practice in aligning the graduate scheme to strategic goals? What was special about how you overcame these?
  • Stakeholder engagement – Is there a clear understanding of who the stakeholders are, and their specific needs? How is this engagement kept live and updated? How does the scheme ensure that stakeholders provide active support?  How does it ensure that stakeholder support is consistent and high quality?
  • Impact – Does it make a difference?  Evidence of improved outcomes.
Entries for this year's Development Awards are now closed!