Permission and What You Disclose

This is not legal advice, and confidentiality obligations differ by contract and jurisdiction. No affiliate links on this site, and no competition is named here as good or bad.

An entry is a detailed account of your organisation, read by people you did not choose, several of whom may work in your field.

Who reads it

The judges, who in a specialised category are frequently practitioners — which is to say, occasionally competitors. For teams that want a concrete workplace example, remote employee monitoring software.

Programme staff, who administer and may read for eligibility. A useful outside reference for comparison is BBC, which provides a useful contrast to the specific process described here.

And, where you are shortlisted, whoever attends an interview or a site visit.

Not the public, in most programmes — though winning entries are sometimes published, which is worth checking before writing anything you would not publish.

What to check first

Your own contracts. Client agreements frequently contain confidentiality clauses covering the existence of the relationship as well as its content.

Whether the client may be named, which is a permission question and is answered by asking.

What the programme does with entries — retention, publication, whether non-winning entries are destroyed.

And whether a confidentiality undertaking is available. Several programmes have one; fewer mention it, and asking is normal.

What not to include

Anything covered by a client confidentiality clause, without written permission.

Personal data about identifiable individuals, beyond what is necessary and permitted — staff quotes, customer details, case histories all carry obligations that do not pause for an award entry.

Commercially sensitive detail that does not evidence a criterion. Margins, supplier terms, methods — if it is not scoring points, it is disclosure for nothing.

And anything you would not want a competitor to read, which is the practical test.

How to evidence without disclosing

Describe the shape rather than the specifics.

"A public sector client in the region" rather than the name, where naming is not permitted — weaker evidence and honest, and better than silence.

Proportions rather than absolute figures, where the absolute number is sensitive: "turnover from this line grew 40%" without stating the line's value.

And a referee who can confirm privately, where the programme uses them — which supplies the assurance without the publication.

Where the programme publishes winners' entries

Check before entering, not after.

Some publish the winning submission in full, some publish a case study written from it, and some publish nothing.

Where full publication is the practice, write the entry knowing it — which changes what goes in and is a legitimate reason to enter a different programme.

And where you win and had not checked, ask what will be published and negotiate the redactions early. Organisers accommodate this and it is much easier before the piece is written than after.

Staff and personal data

An entry describing people is an entry processing personal data, and the obligations apply regardless of the purpose.

Ask before naming anybody, including in a positive context — and particularly for individual categories, where a shortlist is public and not everybody wants that.

Anonymised survey data is both stronger evidence and simpler — a figure with a response rate stated rather than three quotes chosen by management.

And where an entry describes somebody who has since left, name them only if there is a reason to and the relationship supports it.

Photographs

A photograph of people requires their agreement, and a photograph taken for one purpose does not automatically transfer to another.

Which catches entries reusing marketing images into a submission that may be published.

Ask, or use images without identifiable people, which for most entries evidences the same thing.

The undertaking worth requesting

One sentence, before submitting.

"Can you confirm that entries are seen only by judges and programme staff, and what happens to non-winning entries after the process?"

A programme with an answer replies immediately. One without an answer has told you how to write the entry — which is to say, cautiously.

Keep the reply.

Where a client says no

A real answer and not a rejection of you.

Public sector bodies, regulated organisations and large corporates frequently cannot agree without a process nobody has capacity for.

Ask what they can do instead: be described anonymously, confirm a figure privately to the programme, or allow a reference to the sector rather than the name.

Most say yes to something, and the narrower request is the one that gets agreed.

The competitor on the panel

Uncomfortable and normal in a narrow field.

Programmes manage it by declaration and recusal, and where the panel is published you can raise it before the deadline.

What you should not do is write a weaker entry defensively. An entry stripped of substance to protect against a hypothetical reader scores badly and protects nothing — the material a competitor would find useful is mostly the material a judge needs.

Where something genuinely cannot be seen by anybody in the field, leave it out entirely and evidence the criterion another way.

What to keep

The permissions, in writing, with the entry.

Who agreed to what, when, and in what terms — alongside the note about who claims any result.

Three lines, and they answer the question that arises when a shortlist is announced and somebody asks whether their name may appear in a press release.

In one line

Ask what the programme does with entries before writing one, and the rest of this page mostly answers itself.

The short version

• An entry is read by judges who may be practitioners in your field, by programme staff, and by anybody at a site visit
• Check your own client contracts first, since confidentiality clauses frequently cover the existence of a relationship as well as its content
• Ask what the programme does with entries: retention, publication, and whether a confidentiality undertaking is available
• Leave out anything under a client clause without written permission, personal data beyond what is necessary, and sensitive detail that scores nothing
• Evidence without disclosing by describing the shape, using proportions rather than absolutes, and offering a referee
• Check whether winning entries are published before entering, since it changes what should go in