The Excellence in Practice Awards recognize individual practices across the full scope of talent development.
Awards are presented to practices that have demonstrated clear and measurable results of achieving organizational goals, meet a demonstrated need, have appropriate design values, and are clearly aligned with other performance improvement initiatives. These practices have long-term, sustained results.
Recognizing Individual Practices Across Talent Development
Award Categories
Choose the category that best fits your practice. Each practice may be entered in only one category. Read the category descriptions below. You may submit more than one entry.
Practices designed to align career plans and tracks for optimal organization performances.
Using interactive process to help individuals and teams develop rapidly and produce results. Improving others' ability to set goals, take action, make better decisions, and make full use of their natural strengths.
Applying structured approaches to shift individuals, teams, and organizations from a current state to a desired state.
Practices that focus on building a culture of caring for both employees and community. A category dedicated to giving back or in service of others. This could include opportunities for employees to volunteer and/or participate in charitable efforts.
This category has two focuses: programs designed to improve the skills and competencies of internal customer service teams; or programs designed to help an organization’s customers/clients successfully use or implement a specific product or service.
Practices designed to address challenges and opportunities related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and cultural competence. These interventions may be at the individual behavior level, team level, organizational level, or all three.
This award recognizes organizations that are proactively equipping their workforce with the skills, mindset, and agility needed to grow in an evolving world. It honors forward-thinking L&D strategies that embrace AI, digital transformation, and continuous upskilling and reskilling to future-proof employees and drive long-term success.
Practices with a global reach which may include uniting global teams, gaining global business leaders' support for TD initiatives, creating global change, and scaling TD/talent management strategies globally.
Practices that span the enterprise and result in building culture, engagement, capacity, and capability. A practice which strategically unites multiple human capital functions to maximize organizational effectiveness.
Practices focused specifically on developing the competencies of leaders and managers, including a focus on “human” skills associated with EQ, communication, and critical thinking skills.
Practices that focus on learning and development in the organization; the design and delivery of training.
Practices that use technology and learning to develop, connect, and engage the workforce.
Practices that provide strategic leadership and organizational support in developing talent to execute the organization's strategy; planning, organizing, monitoring, and adjusting activities associated with the administration of learning and talent development solutions.
Practices focused on helping new employees be successful in their roles and understand an organizational culture, process, and procedures.
Applying a systematic process of discovering and analyzing performance gaps; planning for future improvement in human performance; designing and developing solutions to close performance gaps. Practices submitted in this category will have many components. Be sure to delineate them clearly. **Single training programs, workshops, initiatives should not be submitted in this category.**
Practices that foster and enable world-class sales competencies and standards that guide and empower sales leaders and sales training professionals to develop the next generation of sales people.
Questions Before Applying for Excellence in Practice Awards
Familiarize yourself with this important information and criteria before applying for ATD's Excellence in Practice Awards.
This awards program is for internal talent development practices and initiatives that organizations use to enhance and develop the knowledge, skills, and capabilities of their employees. Therefore, except for the Customer Service Training category, customer-focused practices or other training efforts that are for those outside the organization are not eligible.
Training suppliers/vendors should partner with their clients if they are interested in applying. The client company would be the one recognized should the entry win.
Applicants do not need to be ATD members to apply.
Click here for additional eligibility and criteria.
Do NOT include any references to your organization’s name or talent development staff in your application. You will be asked for your company name when you create your account. Please note it where asked but do not include it in any other answers. ATD reserves the right to disqualify any entries that contain company-identifying information in their entry.
The review of your entry will be anonymous and judges should not see the name of your organization/company or staff anywhere in the entry. All entries are reviewed by a panel of volunteer subject matter experts with extensive talent development experience.
Do not reference previous awards you've won or other information that could be used to identify the organization name.
If the practice name includes the company name, rename the practice to something generic. For example “The ATD Learning System” would be called “The COMPANY Learning System” on the application.
Applications must be in English. We recommend the application be reviewed by an editor for clarity.
There is an application fee for each application submitted.
Each entry may be submitted in only one category. Organizations may submit multiple entries. There is no limit. Each entry has a separate entry fee.
Please note word limits where indicated on the application. These are hard-coded into the text boxes where you will type your answers and cannot be changed.
You may designate parts of your answer NFP (not for publication) if you are including information that should not be shared publicly if your practice is chosen as a winner. To do this put brackets around the information you would not want to share and type NFP.
Make sure any metrics you share are clearly and strongly substantiated in your answer.
Some questions will provide you the opportunity to upload supporting graphics. Please ensure your company name is not in any uploaded documents, including the file name.
Winner acknowledgments: Should your organization be selected as a winner, you will be required to complete a release form. We require a release form to be signed by all winning organizations in order to recognize the winners across various publications and platforms.
Click here for additional eligibility and criteria noted on the application portal.
To be considered, a practice must be in place for at least two years (including time in pilot phase). Practices that have previously received an Excellence in Practice Award may apply again five years after their award was bestowed. For example, a pilot program that started in May 2022, with the program launching in June 2022, would be eligible to apply in June 2024 because it has been in place for at least two full years at the time the current application opened.
While each practice may only be submitted in one category, there is no limit to the number of practices that can be entered. A separate entry fee applies to each application.
Yes, an entry fee of $225 (USD) per application is charged as the last step in submitting your application via the online portal. This must be paid by credit card (Fee subject to change).
Yes, all applications should be anonymous (no mention of company name). Only indicate the company name where asked when you set up your profile. Your company name is viewable only by ATD staff. Reviewers will not know your company name as the review process is blind. All personal data is also hidden from reviewers. Please do not include any company-identifying information in your responses. ATD reserves the right to disqualify entries that do not follow this rule. More information about this rule is found on the awards portal and noted under "criteria."
Yes! Interested in learning about winners previous to 2015? Email [email protected] to obtain a PDF of previous awards booklets. For an archive of ATD BEST Award winners, visit the TD magazine archive.
If you have additional questions, please email Erin Strider at [email protected].
