Excellence in Leadership Awards

Employee engagement is a top UCI and UC priority. Leaders inspire employees to focus their individual talents on the goals of the organization and to contribute at the highest level. Effective leaders are also guardians of the culture and exemplars in living the organization’s values. As a result, great leaders are often met with the prize of engaged employees who feel prepared and empowered to progress in their careers. The UCI Staff Assembly Excellence in Leadership Award recognizes these exceptional leaders at all levels.

Nominations Open: October 10, 2023
Nominations Close: November 9, 2023

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Awards

There are four variants of the Excellence in Leadership Award. One for each of the following four competencies, respectively:

• Collaboration
• Employee Engagement
• Innovation
• Well-being Support
• Plus, an additional overall award for excellence across all four competencies.

All awardees will receive a distinctive, personalized memento and the overall award recipient(s) will receive a $1,000 cash prize. Awards will be presented at the annual UCI Staff Service Awards Ceremony.

Eligibility

• Only those managers or supervisors with staff appointments are eligible for nomination; those holding academic and/or student assistant title codes are not eligible.
• Managers and supervisors may be nominated every year, but may only receive an award every three years (unless the manager or supervisor moves to a different job/department).
• Only nominations from the nominee’s direct report(s) will be reviewed; nominations submitted by a nominee’s supervisor will not be eligible for consideration.

Nomination Process and Requirements

• Nominations must be submitted online by November 9, 2023
• Nominations must include:
  1. A detailed nomination statement on why your nominee deserves recognition for the category selected. Be sure to include specific examples (Nomination Statement Examples). If the nomination is for the overall category, provide an explanation specific to each of the three categories it compasses.
     • Nomination statements for each category should be limited to 250 words or less. Any information submitted beyond that limit will not be taken into consideration.
     • Refrain from using personal identifying remarks as much as possible (if included, these will be redacted to limit reviewer biases)
  2. A signature page including representation from at least 50% of the nominee’s direct reports in support of the nomination
• Incomplete nominations will not be considered

We recommend drafting the statements in a separate document, then copying/pasting the text into the online form.

Any direct report may nominate an individual manager or supervisor. However, if more than one person nominates the same individual, they will be asked to work with other nominators to combine their nominations into one submission with one contact name.

Selection of Awardees

The Staff Assembly council will convene a nomination review committee that will select awardees based on the merits outlined in the nomination statement. Criteria for selection are clear demonstration of the following leadership competencies in the nomination statement: Collaboration, Employee Engagement, and Innovation.

We improved the process by adding a nominee name redaction step. We are aiming to reduce implicit bias by redacting the names of nominees on the applications prior to having the committee begin their review.

All nominees will receive an email from Staff Assembly and the Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor congratulating them on their nomination and inviting them to attend the Staff Service Awards, where the announcement of these awardees will be made.

Contact Us

Any questions, comments or suggestions, contact Stephane Muller, e: mullers@uci.edu