If you follow us on social media, you may have heard the news – our Managing Director, Lisa, is representing The Edwards Company as a finalist in the West Midlands PA Awards!
We’re incredibly excited about this achievement so far, so we thought we’d take the time to explain how we’ve managed to get to this point, the process of becoming a finalist and our thoughts on a potential win!
The Beginning
The West Midlands PA Awards are run by founder, Daniel Skermer. They’re designed to highlight the achievements of those within the Personal Assistant industry, including Virtual Assistants (that’s us!). Lisa and The Edwards Company were nominated initially some months ago now, in the Independent VA of the Year category. This category is designed for Virtual Assistants all over the Midlands who have made an outstanding contribution to the VA industry and the businesses of the clients they work with. With this in mind, we’re hugely honoured that The Edwards Company has been recognised in this category, particularly against such strong competition!
To secure our nomination, Lisa had to share some facts about our business journey with Daniel and his team of panellists, first in written form. To get across just how passionate we are about The Edwards Company and the work that we do, Lisa described our business journey so far in-depth – detailing the successes and triumphs, achievements and challenges alike. Here at The Edwards Company, we like to be open and honest about our business and the challenges that come with running one so as not to give the illusion that being successful is easy – it definitely isn’t! Our entire team work incredibly hard to provide the best services possible for our clients and we feel that it’s this dedication that has allowed us to progress to the next round of the awards.
Getting Serious
This is where the daunting bit comes in! Once Lisa and The Edwards Company had passed the nominations stage with flying colours, we were shortlisted for the next stage! This involved a zoom conference with some established Personal and Virtual Assistants to enable Lisa to discuss our business journey further. This was an opportunity for Lisa to really get the essence our of team across. Here at The Edwards Company, we pride ourselves on being personable and approachable, as well as professional which enables us to build valuable working relationships with our clients. We were pleased to be able to showcase this to the panel as it’s something we’ve worked incredibly hard on over the last few years.
This opportunity also gave Lisa the chance to chat about the struggles businesses (including ours!) have faced over the last year while the pandemic has been running rampant. She detailed how we’ve stepped in to help clients who have had to furlough staff or scale back on staff numbers completely, as well as those who saw unexpected growth during the pandemic and needed an extra pair of helping hands to keep on top of the workload. And not to mention keeping our own team safe as well. We’ve had office rearrangements, home working, new rules and regulations, but Lisa was able to show the panel that we’ve taken this in our stride and are on route to coming back better than ever.
Our team has had to work even harder than usual throughout the duration of the pandemic and we were thrilled to learn that – despite the challenges (and rather heavy workload!) that the pandemic has brought about – we’ve made it through to the next round. Finalists!
The Final Stage
Making it through to the finalist stage really is a huge achievement for us – but the hard work doesn’t end there! Lisa is now be preparing to represent us in front of the West Midlands PA Awards judges in the next few months before attending the awards themselves in November, along with our team members.
This is a fantastic achievement for Lisa and the entire team at The Edwards Company. Day in, day out, we work tirelessly to support our customers as much as possible. From hours upon hours of credit control to content creation to data entry and general admin, we really do go above and beyond to ensure our clients and their businesses are fully supported with our services. This award signifies that we’re doing something right. Our passion, dedication and hard work are really paying off, and we’re making a difference to our clients.
The fact that we’re now being recognised for this achievement is the icing on the cake!
Stay tuned on our social media and on our blog page to find out how we get on in the next round – we’re looking forward to sharing the rest of our West Midlands PA Awards journey with you!