The Co-op received a staggering 1,859 nominations in the first ever Co-op-wide ‘Thank you for Being Co-op awards 2018’, which closed on 2 March.

Over a six-week period, Co-op employees were able to go online to nominate their fellow colleagues across 12 awards categories – ranging from the Community star award, to Funeralcare colleague of the year.

The website, which was designed and built by Wordshop to a very tight schedule, included a secure online form that allowed the Project team to review and judge each nomination before drawing up an initial shortlist and downloading the nominations as PDFs for further review by the judging panel. Each nominee received a thank you email to let them know they had been nominated.

The Wordshop team is now working on the next phase of the website, which will celebrate the many inspirational stories gathered through the awards programme. The winners’ stories will be published on a ‘Wall of Fame’, while, to keep the momentum going, employees will be able to send online thank you cards to fellow colleagues and submit further inspiring stories for sharing.

The winners will be announced on 19 April – and shortly thereafter the revamped website will go live at coop.co.uk/thankyou.