Welcome to the 2022 IRMS Awards!

Nominations for this year's IRMS Awards are OPEN NOW until Monday 14 February 2022. Read on to find out more including how to nominate!

Categories & Criteria

In our awards, we look for examples of best practice and excellence under the following headings:

• Professional of the Year
• Team of the Year
• Lifetime Achievement
• Supplier of the Year
• Innovation of the Year
• New Professional of the Year

Each award is different and requires different things to be considered 'best practice' or indeed excellent. Take a read through the criteria for each category and see if anyone springs to mind. Please note, the New Professional Award does not work through nominations, but through a self-submitted paper on an information and records management topic of your choosing. For more details, take a look at the New Professional Awards page.

How to Nominate

When nominations are open, nominating someone couldn't be easier if you follow these steps:

• Step 1. Make sure the person / body you are nominating is happy to be nominated. Some people don't like the attention and that is absolutely fine, but please ensure you have spoken to them before you start this work.
• Step 2. Write your nomination statement and ensure it is no longer than 800 words (and no shorter than 600 words), ideally in a word document, and contains enough evidence to support your nomination.
• Step 3. Send a covering email containing the below to awards@irms.org.uk before the deadline of 14 February 2022. DO NOT SEND TO MEMBERS OF THE EXECUTIVE. Only nominations made to awards@irms.org.uk will be considered. Your nomination should contain:
• the name of the person or organisation you are nominating (and ideally contact details for them)
• the role/s and organisation (if applicable) of the nominee/s
• which award you are nominating them for
• the email contact details of the nominee/s
• a statement on why you are nominating them (no longer than 800 words and no less than 600 words)
• your name and IRMS membership number
• Step 4. Sit back, enjoy a nice cup of tea, and wait to hear from the Awards Panel. They may be in touch to ask for some more information or any clarifications. We can't tell you if you have won, but we do announce the finalists, all of whom are encouraged to attend our Conference and Awards Gala Dinner in May.
• Please note. If any form of cheating, bribery or harassment of the awards panel members or fraudulent statements on a nomination is found on the application or as part of the public vote, the Awards Panel reserves the right to void any such nomination and refer the matter to the IRMS Executive where further action may be taken. The IRMS is committed to fairness and transparency and any such behaviour will not be tolerated.

The Process

Entries for each category are collated and reviewed by the Awards Panel. New Professional, Lifetime Achievement and Professional of the Year are judged by the Awards Panel and the rest are put to a member vote to determine the winner for each category.

The finalists for each category are announced (with the exception of Lifetime Achievement) before the Awards Ceremony, but only the awards panel will know the final results until they are announced at the Gala Dinner on the Monday of IRMS Conference.

In order to vote you must be an IRMS member and logged into your membership account. Further details on voting will be provided at a later date.

To sum up the awards process:

• Nominations are made by members
• Nominations are collated and validated by the Awards Panel
• Nominees for Team, Supplier and Innovation are put out to member vote to pick a winner
• Nominees for Lifetime, New Professional and Professional are reviewed and voted on by the Awards Panel
• Finalists for all except Lifetime and New Professional are announced to the membership
• Winners are announced on the evening of the IRMS Gala Dinner and Awards Ceremony at IRMS Conference.

For any questions or queries please contact the awards panel at awards@irms.org.uk.

How we handle nominee and nominator personal data:

Obviously in order to have awards we need to collect personal data on both the member making a nomination as well as the person being nominated. We do not need the nominees' consent, as it is in our legitimate interest to run such awards, but, as per the above, the nominee should be aware of your nomination of them so that they can chose not to be nominated. We respect their wishes and any submissions made on them will be deleted if they do not wish to proceed.

All personal data is kept secure and confidential (for obvious reasons) and heavily locked down so that only the Award Panel can access it. All information is stored on our IT environment which is hosted in the EU. Nominations made through the website portal are stored in the United States where the website database is hosted.

Once the finalists are confirmed, the nominations for team, innovation and supplier are put in the public domain to members to vote for whom they want to win. All other nominations are kept confidential until nearer the awards gala dinner where they are published to members and the winners announced on the night of the ceremony. No contact details for nominees or nominators are put to members.

Names, job roles and employers of award winners and runners up are kept as part of the historical record of the Society and its awards scheme available on the IRMS website.

For more details about how the IRMS handles the personal data within its care, please visit the IRMS Data Protection page.