Successful learning and performance initiatives deserve to be highlighted and shared in order to promote innovation and excellence within our organizations.

ASTD San Diego will honor outstanding learning and performance achievements through its 2009 PEAK Performance Awards. Emphasis will be placed on recognizing those learning and performance initiatives which exemplify Performance Excellence and Applied Knowledge.

Eligibility details:

• Large and small organizations are eligible
• Organizations can be private, public or non-profit
• The organization must be located in San Diego County
• The application must be received by the PEAK Performance Award Committee by July 25th, 2009 at midnight PST.

(There is no set quota of organizations to be selected to win. The PEAK Performance Awards will recognize as many organizations as meet the criteria.)

The 2009 award winners will:

• be honored at the October Chapter Meeting at the Handlery Hotel.
• meet their peers and share their award-winning practices at the October Chapter Meeting.
• have the privilege of using the 2009 ASTD BEST Award Winner logo.

How winners will be determined:

The deadline for submitting the PEAK Performance Awards application is July 25th, 2009 at midnight PST. Entries will be reviewed during July and August, and applicants will be notified of their results in late September.

The PEAK Performance Awards Committee will review the submissions and rank them against a common set of criteria. Reviewers will assign ratings based on analysis of evidence that the applying organization goes beyond common measures of excellence and uses learning as a strategic business tool.

Success Factors for Entering

The most successful entries:

• provide metrics and evidence of strong links between learning activities and business results that are strategically important to the company.
• show learning’s relevance to organizational goals.
• are clear and concise, but tell their complete story in the open-ended questions.
• answer the question that is asked. For example, if the question asks what impact an initiative had on performance, a successful entry would not write about how many people attended a course, but how performance of the employees was improved through the initiative.
• give examples of the impact of learning on organizational goals, not only on the learning function goals.
• provide evidence to support statements. For example, it’s not enough to say “employees can now do XYZ” without data or other measurement.
• show how learning is linked to organizational strategy and how it supports and gets results for business needs.
• take a systematic approach to showing the effectiveness and impact of learning.
• demonstrate how the learning function leads or is involved in performance improvement.

Download the application here.