NABEC Business Awards, 2012
The School of Management offers undergraduate students an exceptional opportunity to benefit by being involved with these awards
The NABEC Awards recognize excellence by businesses in the manufacturing, retail, service, and professional sectors, and is organised by the Northern Adelaide Business Enterprise Centre. Businesses that win these awards will be eligible for National Business Awards, sponsored by Business Enterprise Centres Australia.
This award program was conducted very successfully with support from UniSA students in 2008, 2009 and 2010. We regret that the program will not be offered in 2011, but we plan to offer it again in 2012.
Who this program is for, and how you can get involved
This program is designed for UniSA undergraduate students. You have the opportunity to work in a team of two students with one of the companies that applies, to help them to complete the application form for these awards. To be specific, you will:
- attend one of the briefing sessions to go through the application process detailed guidelines will tell you exactly what you have to do and you will be given advice on how to work effectively with businesses
- be allocated by the NABEC team to work with another person on this exercise, and your team will be allocated to work with a business applying for these awards. Selection and team allocation will be based on the preferences that you give in your registration for (obtained at a briefing session).
- make an appointment for your team to visit the company, when you will interview a small number of people in the business to collect the information needed for the application form.
- write the application as a team exercise so that it is a selling document. You may need to phone your company contact person for additional information.
- make a second appointment for your team to review (and refine) the application with the business, before it is submitted by the business.
- attend the award presentation function (this is optional)
- attend the review and networking session. This will give you the chance to catch up with the businesses and with other managers. This may lead to a job.
- You will be able to register early in 2012
The benefits
This will not be an onerous exercise. Visits to the company take about an hour and a half plus travelling time (ie a morning or afternoon), and you will probably spend two to three hours in your team to write the application (this is not a complicated document).
Valuable benefits will include:
- learning how a business really operates across all areas of its activities - this will help to further develop your knowledge and understanding of management
- seeing how the knowledge that you have gained in your studies is applied in practice - this will give you a good case study that you can mention in a job interview
- developing your communication and written presentation skills
- being invited to the award presentation function in July. This will be a great opportunity to network with business people - and this networking might well open up job opportunities
- learning from a review session that will be held after the award presentation function; this session will include businesses as well as students
- receiving an appropriate certificate and medallion to confirm your participation in these awards
You can see that this opportunity gives you the chance to build a number of UniSA's Graduate Qualities, and so enhance your CV.
In addition: As these awards are for businesses that are located in the City of Playford, the City of Salisbury, and the Town of Gawler (a few kilometres north of Adelaide), each student finalising an application will receive $25 contribution towards travel expenses.
Your likely time commitment
This project will require a modest time commitment. Our experience in running this project suggests that you will need to allocate time to:
- attend one of the briefing sessions organised by UniSA at the City West campus in March 2012, and perhaps one or two of the workshops that will follow the briefing sessions
- arrange an interview with the business, at that time that will suit your team and the business. In other words, you can organise meetings with the business around your own commitments.
- time to travel to and from the business (probably 40 minutes to an hour each way)
- interviewing people in the business (probably an hour and a half)
- putting the application together as a selling document (possibly three hours in your team, depending on how you organise yourselves)
- attending a follow-up review session with the business (about an hour), and travelling to and from the business
- finalising the application in your team (probably an hour or an hour and a half), e-mailing the application to the business, so that the business can then submit the application
In addition, you will be invited to attend the award presentation in July, but this is optional and will be up to you. We will also have a review session at the end of this project, and that will take a couple of hours as an after hours event.
Information for participating students
Confidentiality: A condition of taking part in this activity is that you undertake to respect confidentiality of business information. This aspect will be discussed further at the briefing session.
How many students are needed? As we do not yet know how many businesses will apply for these awards, we are not able to say how many teams will be needed for this project. Our aim, however, is to give as many students as possible the opportunity to benefit from this exercise.
Follow this link for detailed information.
Follow this link for answers to frequently asked questions
Register for this innovative project!
If you are an undergraduate UniSA student in the first half of 2012, then you are welcome to register in 2012 for this exciting and beneficial project.
A successful project since 2008!
In 2008, this project was successfully completed with 26 UniSA students helping 13 businesses to prepare their applications for awards that were conferred on 2 July. The winners were:
- Gawler Screen Printers (manufacturing)
- Africa Dreaming (retail)
- SA Lending Centre (services)
- Australian Workforce Training (professional services)
In addition, the SA Lending Centre won the Business of the Year Award.
All the businesses that applied attended a workshop on building innovation and entrepreneurial capabilities that was conducted by Peter Balan and Noel Lindsay on 24 July.
In 2009, 30 students were involved, and the winners were announced on 2 July:
- Gawler Screen Printers (manufacturing)
- Natural Earth Skin Care (retail)
- Playtime XXX Adult Gift Shop (services)
- Australian Workplace Training (professional services)
- Lewis Horticulture (horticulture)
In addition, Lewis Horticulture won the Business of the Year Award
All the businesses that were shortlisted attended a workshop on building innovation and entrepreneurial capabilities that was conducted by Peter Balan and Noel Lindsay on 5 August.
In 2010, the winners were:
- Elite Signs (manufacturing)
- Gawler Colour World (retail)
- Playtime Adult Gift Shop (services)
- Australian Workplace Training (professional services)
In addition, Gawler Colour World won the Business of the Year Award
The businesses that were shortlisted attended a workshop on innovation capability building, and the winners attended a separate workshop on innovation priority setting. These were presented by Peter Balan on 9 February 2011.
Students taking part in this project were presented with a certificate.
Anonymous comments from students who took part in the project included:
- it helps business students to learn about practical business, as just books are not only good source of learning
- the idea was great, it led us to improve our skills, especially communication skills
- it also let us know how, and in what way, to talk to business people
- it was well set out, and I knew exactly what was expected of me
- it was a good learning opportunity for me and helped me develop my writing style, and I could network
- it was a great chance to learn about the business, and gain practical experience in developing the application and learn something outside of what I have learnt at Uni
- good experience, especially to step out of our comfort zone and talk, interview and to understand how business works in real life
NABEC Project gains two UniSA Community Engagement Awards!
The NABEC project gained the inaugural Division of Business Community Engagement Award for 2008, and also gained a Commendation in the Chancellor's Awards for Community Engagement (both in 2009).
These competitive awards have been designed to recognise and
reward individuals and/or teams of staff in the Division of Business and the
whole University who have
organised programs, activities and services that engage students with our
communities and contribute to student learning and the social and cultural
development of those communities.
Other activities in the Northern Adelaide region
You may wish to get involved in other exciting and innovative activities in this growth region of Adelaide. Check the UniSA Northern Partnerships (UNAP) website.