Nominations to open for Rotary Torquay Business Excellence Awards

THE Rotary Torquay Business Excellence Awards are back in 2023, and will be presented in a bigger and better format this year.

Nominations for the awards, in six categories, open tomorrow (Saturday, July 1).

The Rotary Club of Torquay handed out flyers for the awards at their social night at the Torquay Hotel on Monday this week ahead of the start of the nomination period.

Sub-committee member Greg Birchall said the COVID-10 pandemic “showed some signs of retreating” last year, so the club felt the time was right to run the awards last year on a trial basis and highlight the key Rotary value of vocational service.

“With limited resources, the trial was run with a small number of business and service categories within the 3228 postcode.

“The model worked to the extent that some worthy enterprises were identified and recognised in each category.”

The club’s board agreed to run an expanded version of the awards this year, and has teamed up with Commerce Torquay to more widely promote the initiative.

The revised categories for the 2023 Rotary Torquay Business Excellence Awards are:

• Health and wellbeing
• Volunteer organisations or individual
• Professional service organisation
• Tourism and hospitality
• Surf industry enterprise, and
• Overall business of the year.

Selection criteria include impact on the enviroment, demonstrating the pursuit of excellence in work practices, quality of personal attributes towards customers and staff, and customer service or standard of service delivery.

Mr Birchall said the Australian economy in 2023 had moved on from the concerns associated with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2022 but was no less challenging.

“Commentators lament an environment of rising cost of living driven by global inflation, rising prices and supply chain issues, perhaps linked to the war in Ukraine.

“In local households, food and energy costs compete for scarce funds. Some families have to chose whether to eat or to heat.

“Graphs shown on the nightly TV news show business confidence to be dropping.

“Despite hopes of revival and renewal and a return to business as usual, business remains a tough gig in post-pandemic Australia.

“Plain survival is again on the agenda. Already depleted by COVID conditions, some may not make it through another crisis.

“We hope that the Business Excellence Awards will provide some recognition and reward to those with the courage, smarts and stamina to press on – even if we can only cheer them on from the sidelines.”

Nominations for the awards close on August 31, with finalists to be selected from September 1-6 and awards presented on October 2.

For more information, head to facebook.com/rotarycluboftorquay or torquayrotary.org.au