Twice a year the Queen bestows upon the hardest working people an award of achievement. This award can be given to people from all walks of life, and is a formal recognition by the royal family of an individual’s achievements in their sector. A person can be awarded a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE), Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE), and as a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE). They recognise outstanding achievements to the community, and are an excellent way to reward someone’s hard work or to bolster your own company’s success.
What Are the Different Awards?
An MBE is awarded for outstanding achievement or service to the community, an OBE is awarded for those who have a major local role in your field, and a CBE is awarded for those with a prominent role at the national level. As a person of business, you would qualify for the OBE, but only if you use education and qualifications to do more for your community than just improve your profit margin.
How Can You Get an OBE?
You cannot nominate yourself, but anyone else can. What you can do personally to improve your chances of someone nominating you are simple; do the best you can to better those around you. This means offering to further their development and education, as well as your own. Great leadership skills, as well as the skills you, yourself, possess, can all increase your chances, and when they will spend approximately 150 hours researching a candidate, you’ll want to boost your likelihood for success as much as possible.
Have a Good and Safe Working Environment
Though providing a safe environment is a legal requirement, you can do so much more for your employees by offering to sponsor their training. You could have one member of every team or every shift certified in first aid, or you can have one of your employees receive IOSH training from Phoenix Health & Safety so that your working environment can be safe, and that your employees’ health is secured. Train everyone on how to inspect your premises and how to report anything amiss, and bring in a specialist once or twice a year to make sure everything is running smoothly behind the scenes. Once you can say you provide a safe environment, you can then work on benefiting your employees in other ways.
Sponsor Their Education and Qualifications
The OBE is given to those who display excellent leadership capabilities, and sponsoring your employees and your community to learn and do better is one of the best ways you can give back. Host your own training or workshops, and sponsor your employees so that they can learn, grow, and share what they have learned with their peers. The more you help those around you educate themselves in areas they are interested in, the more tools you give them to succeed.
Being a leader is difficult, and being a leader who deserves an OBEis even more so. To first be nominated for an OBE, or even an MBE, you need to have a significant role either locally or regionally, where your work, achievements and expertise are known on a national scale.
