Businesses are being urged to step up and receive the recognition they deserve at the tenth annual Caerphilly Business Forum Awards in association with Coleg Gwent.
The awards are open to businesses of all sizes and sectors from across the county borough and will be celebrated at an awards dinner and ceremony at Llancaiach Fawr Manor in Nelson on Friday November 11.
But with the closing date for entries – September 23 – looming fast, Caerphilly Business Forum Chairman Andrew Diplock has urged businesses in the area to seize the opportunity and enter now.
He said: “This year we’re marking the 10th anniversary of the awards and they will be the biggest and best yet.
“The awards have grown massively in that time and the forum itself is thriving with membership, activity and our profile as an organisation all developing substantially but we still want to attract and involve other businesses in the area and to do that we need to get the message across that these awards are for them and about them.
“It’s all too easy for directors, managers and owners to think someone else must be doing better than they are and play down their success. And I suspect it will be even easier to adopt that mindset this year because of the economic circumstances in which we find ourselves, where minimal growth and even survival has been a real achievement for some.
“But businesses need to overcome the ‘it’s only us’ philosophy. Nobody who enters the awards knows whether they’ll be successful or not but they do know that they won’t win if they don’t enter.
“The benefits to those who are short listed – and especially to winners – are enormous. Recognising achievement is vital in all walks of life – there’s nothing like someone saying ‘well done!’ to encourage you to push on and renew your efforts. Our awards do precisely that; put businesses in the spotlight and say ‘look what you have achieved’.
“The resultant publicity and accolades then provide a fantastic boost to morale for everyone associated with your business. And it opens doors which may otherwise have been closed by telling people that your company is a success, that it is well run, here to stay and ready to do business. I can vouch for all that personally as my company, UES Energy, is itself a past CBF award winner.”
Entry for the awards is simple, using entry forms that can be downloaded from the Caerphilly Business Forum website www.cbforum.co.uk. There are more categories than ever this year catering for businesses of different sizes, different aspects of business and individuals within businesses. The full list is available on the website.
Tickets for the event have been fully sold each year, so this year’s event has been expanded by a further 60 seats.
For more information on the 10th Caerphilly Business Forum Awards in association with Coleg Gwent, contact marketing and events officer Natalie Whyatt on 029 2125 1395 or email her at natalie@cbforum.co.uk.