Guide: Organize a Transparent Judging Process and Get Undeniably Good Results

By: Tetiana Hanchar Tetiana Hanchar
Date: Oct 13, 2017
Comment: 0
Category: Awards Management

Excitement, petulance, joy – that all surrounds the judging results, which come on the due date, once the assessment has been completed. The process of judging is essential in awards events, while the results can determine the positioning of a brand in the future, the scope of public exposure, personal reputation, and thousands of other factors. To ensure the crystal-clear transparency of judging results, you have to address the key “how’s” and “what’s” of top-notch awards management.

The importance of a transparent judging process

The abundance of award events that are often organized by corporations, associations, and educational institutions have some big goals behind them, including industry growth, rewarding professional growth, and launching projects. The transparent process of judging accounts for objective publicity, which is why this is the part of contest organization that you shouldn’t ignore. Two essential elements of awards program judging are selecting the experts qualified to make an assessment and the effective system for judging management.

How does a transparent judging process look like?

There’s the clear definition of a transparent judging procedure, which stems from the well-established features of objective assessment for both online and in-house awarding ceremonies. Check out these ingredients of transparency in awards management:

Clarity in terms of judgment criteria. Objective judging relies on quality metrics. Therefore, prior to starting any assessment, contest organizers have to acquaint judges with the criteria for judging and make these criteria visible on a system page, in case online assessment is sustained, or printed out for in-house evaluation sessions. Even though contest organizers should absolutely trust the professional expertise of judges, it’s still critical to have a framework that will guide judges through the quality aspects of submitted projects or campaigns.
Secure access. Confidentiality is critical, when it comes to contest submissions. Some event organizers are sceptical about the use of online platforms for judging, due to data privacy concerns. The reality shows that submitting a project to a secure cloud-service is pretty reliable, in case the platform meets security standards.

Experts’ professionalism. Picking a winner needs professional input, even though one should stick to the established criteria. Judges, who have some experience in the industry or similar projects, make the great contribution to the judging process.

Reporting. To ensure the life-long future for the contest results and get a chance to operate the gained data at presentations or other in-house meetings, the function of reporting should be available on an online platform for judging.

How to organize a transparent judging process?

Start your long run through the awards assessment from selecting an online system for contest management. Here are several steps you have to take while choosing your perfect match:

#1. Go through the goals and figure out what your needs are. Think of the number of judging rounds you’ll need, criteria customization, and the possible voting formats. Don’t forget to integrate your judging process requirements with submission standards.

#2. Create the framework that will feature your judges assignment process, judge’s abstention, the management of judging groups, and shortlisting.

#3. Go for the options that cater for mobile. You never know which devices your judges are going to use, which is why it is critical to ensure the perfect alignment with mobile.

#4. Make the list of “winners”, including the most suitable online platform options, and discuss the final choice with your team. In case you have difficulties with selecting the judgment system, you can address colleagues or contest entrants to test the options.

#5. Make your decision and test it. Some platforms require some initial training to get started. Test the one you selected and see whether judges will be able to deal with it intuitively or you’ll need to run the training session for them.

Once you’re all set on the technical part, make your choice of judges. Try to focus only on the relevant industry segments and choose experts, whose opinion matters for your potential contest entrants. For instance, if you’re launching a scholarship program focusing on fashion projects for students, target the experts, who have the experience of working with young talents.

Lastly, consider the locations of judges, their time schedules and the alignment of your judging platform with these indicators to avoid timing gaps.

Requirements for judges and judging process

In contest organization, you’re in charge of making the right choice of people, who will have to make the right choice of winners. Here are the basic requirements your judging suite has to meet to qualify for the involvement:

Relevant experience. This shouldn’t necessarily relate to the experience in the role of a judge, but rather with the acquaintance with the subject of a contest, related projects or campaigns.
Acquaintance with judgment criteria and the platform use. The perfect understanding of all “hows” that relate to the process of judging is a must.
Field-related knowledge. This is worth more than its weight in gold during the judging process. The expertise of judges in the industry can determine the objectiveness of awarding and the future of contest entrants.
Unbiased treatment. To avoid any conflicts of interest, it’s an obligatory measure to work only with people who can provide objective and unbiased assessments.

The results of transparent judging process

In the end, the judging transparency is all about solid results. Opt for undeniable outcomes by going through these three aspects:

Real-time result tracking. Make sure that the platform you run allows viewing all scores and comments on one centralized board in real-time.
Give the chance to respond. Yes, people can disagree. Offer the solution that allows running an extra judging round or providing the comments to scores.
Export. Hard copies aren’t dead yet. The printed reports with the judging results can make a great contribution to the project presentation or a discussion session.

Ready to excel in online judging & voting software? You can get started with Judgify right now and ensure transparency for each of your awards management campaigns.