Streamlining Diversity Data Collection for the BAFTA Television Awards
Streamlining Diversity Data Collection for the BAFTA Television Awards
In 2020, BAFTA launched a comprehensive review of diversity and inclusion across all its processes to better support the Film, Television, and Games industries. One significant outcome was the adoption of the BFI Television Diversity Standards into the entry criteria. Released in 2019, these standards were designed to enhance inclusivity and representation in the UK television industry by addressing the underrepresentation of groups such as women, people from minority ethnic backgrounds, disabled individuals, working-class people, and LGBTQ+ communities.
By adopting these existing standards, rather than creating its own, BAFTA aligned itself with industry-wide criteria, allowing productions to incorporate these into their processes and encouraging more inclusive hiring and commissioning practices. Initially, these standards were optional, providing productions time to adapt, but they have since become a mandatory requirement for eligibility in the Television Awards.
After the rule change, BAFTA’s Learning, Inclusion, and Talent (LIT) department, which oversees diversity and inclusion, collaborated with the Awards team to update the entry form in Nucleus, the Awards Entry and Judging Platform that I manage as Product Manager. While Nucleus is flexible enough to allow administrators to modify the form, all submitted data still had to be thoroughly reviewed and verified to comply with GDPR guidelines.
This need for validation created bottlenecks, particularly when handling large data sets. The Awards team had to validate every piece of submitted information, and the addition of diversity data added a substantial amount of extra work. Entrants also needed to source and present this new data appropriately for the awards. The Television Awards entries are published on BAFTA View, a VOD platform I launched, where members review all video content and associated metadata. However, videos cannot be published until all data is approved in a single process, causing delays that shortened the window for member review.
The extra workload significantly increased pressure on the Awards team, who found themselves responsible for verifying and requesting additional data. Meanwhile, the data fell under the LIT team’s purview, but there was no practical approval process that allowed both teams to efficiently review and approve entries. Even if such a process had existed, it would likely have caused further delays in publishing the entries.
The second core issue involved reporting the diversity data, which presented two key challenges. While Nucleus has built-in reporting functionality that allows data to be exported as a CSV or XLSX file, it lacks robust data visualisation tools. Additionally, the form design included free text fields for explaining how each production met the criteria, making it difficult to interrogate and visualise large portions of the data set effectively without AI assistance.
Initially, the process relied on manually exporting data and updating spreadsheets, which proved time-consuming and caused significant delays in delivering insights to senior management, BAFTA Committees, and BFI partners for timely decision-making.
As the Product Manager, I was tasked with finding a solution to streamline this complex process. My initial discussions with stakeholders began in August 2023, which was too late to implement development changes for the 2024 Television Awards, scheduled to open in September. I conducted several interviews with key stakeholders, including the Television Awards Officer, who oversees the awards entry process, and the LIT Research Manager, responsible for the diversity data, to pinpoint the core issues:
Increased Workload: Collecting diversity data as part of the entry form created an additional burden on the Awards Team and entrants, causing delays in the approval process.
Limited Data Access: The LIT team lacked access to the necessary data, as it was embedded within forms containing irrelevant information.
Lack of Data Visualisation: There was no effective data visualisation, and the LIT team needed faster access to data, ideally as entries were being submitted, to enable timely decision-making by stakeholders.
After a full review of the process and capturing all business requirements, I developed two proposals: a short-term solution for immediate improvements and a long-term plan for sustained efficiency. I knew a development solution in Nucleus would be needed to optimise workflows over the longer term — an area where my team excels in creating versatile new features to address user problems and support future workflows. However, there were some quick wins achievable with existing functionality.
Nucleus supports multistage entry processes, a method already adopted for some BAFTA awards, like the Film Awards. In this process, entrants provide minimal data upfront, allowing a video file to be quickly published on BAFTA View for members to review while the larger dataset is verified in the background by the Awards Team. I proposed that the Television Awards adopt a similar workflow, enabling programmes to be approved and published more rapidly. This would not completely eliminate the additional data checking burden but would allow videos to be available sooner.
The second proposed change was to leverage AWS QuickSight, a Business Intelligence tool BMT had been exploring, to visualise the dataset more effectively. Given the constraints of time, reporting would be limited to predefined questions to analyse the number of productions meeting each criterion. Although QuickSight could not interpret free text responses, it provided a much clearer overview of the dataset, enabling management to make comparisons by category, broadcaster, and region, which was a significant improvement over the previous year.
These measures were accepted and, while they did not fully resolve all workflow issues, they delivered noticeable improvements and immediate benefits.
To address these challenges comprehensively, I proposed a new, partially automated workflow. After reviewing Nucleus’s functionality and consulting stakeholders, I realised the only way to overcome the bottlenecks was to remove the Diversity Questions from the Television Awards forms and manage them as a separate project. This necessitated a two-stage entry process.
One concern for the Awards team was the potential delay in approving entry data. Nucleus has a progression functionality that allows an entry to be copied or moved between projects. This capability enables administrators to create multi-stage entry forms with complete control over the data requested and displayed at each stage, and to decide which data is carried over. The key is that the trigger for an entry to progress is the approval of the data, which also pushes it to BAFTA View.
However, with hundreds of entries submitted in a short timeframe, the existing process caused delays. Entrants would submit their initial form and then wait to submit the second, delaying data submission. To resolve this, I decided to use the submission transition as a trigger to automate the cloning of the entry into the second diversity form.
A further complication was that not all entries required diversity data — for example, entries in the International category or those solely for performers. Here, the “Category” functionality in Nucleus could be utilised to manage entries by type. We developed a high-level workflow:
– The entrant completes and submits the form.
– Nucleus automation creates a clone of the entry if required and triggers emails to notify entrants of the new entry.
– Awards admins review and approve the initial entry.
– LIT admins review and approve the diversity data.
Another challenge was handling entries that failed to meet the diversity standards. Nucleus originally had three states for entries: “Unsubmitted,” “Submitted,” and “Approved.” However, if failed entries were marked as “Unsubmitted,” it would be unclear whether they were incomplete or failed. This had been a minor issue that admins had worked around, but it presented an opportunity to introduce a new status called “Unsuccessful.” This new status allowed admins to categorise entries that did not meet the eligibility criteria, streamlining the workflow. This feature has since become integral to the diversity workflow and is also used by our clients for other applications.
Additionally, the existing mechanisms for collecting diversity data were not optimised for reporting. A key requirement of this project was to improve reporting capabilities, so I proposed refactoring the form to use predefined questions for the required data. By setting up questions in a structured way, we could utilise dependencies within Nucleus’s form-building UI to automatically determine if a production met the criteria. This automation reduced the administrative workload, as decisions on applications could be made instantly, with LIT teams verifying the data as a separate step. This approach decoupled the process from the main Television Awards workflow, allowing admins to focus on programmes that failed verification or needed further attention, while streamlining the approval of compliant submissions.
I worked closely with the LIT and Awards stakeholders to ensure the form captured the right information while remaining user-friendly. The specific question requirements were outlined by the stakeholders, and I leveraged my form-building expertise to provide insights and suggest improvements. We went through several stages of design, initially reducing large amounts of text to create a lean and intuitive form that only displayed relevant questions to entrants. This process involved analysing each field for its necessity and user impact, making the form clearer and easier to navigate.
To ensure the form was fit for purpose, I coordinated with our Lead Developer, testing the design against AWS QuickSight’s capabilities to confirm that our new structure could support enhanced data visualisation. The core element of this implementation was automating the transition of entry status—entries would automatically be marked as “Approved” or “Unsuccessful” based on pre-defined criteria embedded in the form dependencies.
After refining the workflow, I collaborated extensively with the Lead Developer to ensure our proposed solution was technically sound. The developer’s feedback helped refine critical aspects of the form’s functionality, particularly around automated status transitions and data handling.
Once the workflow was finalised, I presented it to the Awards and LIT Teams, addressing their concerns and securing their approval. Following this, I crafted a comprehensive business case to justify the development costs, highlighting how the new form and workflow would improve engagement, streamline operations, and enhance data collection. After several discussions with the leadership team, the proposal was approved, and we began development in February 2024.
I assigned the development tasks to one of the experienced developers on my team who thrives on technical challenges. I worked closely with this developer to explain the workflow, the purpose behind each functionality, and the broader project goals. The lead developer also provided critical input, ensuring the developer understood the requirements fully and could suggest additional improvements during the implementation.
Throughout development, we used Agile methodologies, allowing us to review, test, and refine each feature to meet the acceptance criteria and ensure seamless integration within the overall workflow. This iterative approach enabled continuous enhancements as we observed functionality in real-time on our development sites.
Now that the Television Awards are open for entry, this will be the true test of the new workflow. I’m excited to see how these improvements enhance the experience for Nucleus users and entrants. While it’s still too early to declare complete success, my focus remains on continuous improvement. Throughout the entry process, I’ll be working closely with stakeholders, gathering feedback, and making necessary tweaks to ensure the system functions seamlessly.
Following the awards, the debrief will involve a comprehensive review of the entire workflow—assessing the data submission process, identifying areas where delays or errors occurred, and gathering feedback from all involved teams. This evaluation will provide insights to further refine our processes, improve efficiency, and better support users.
This project has reinforced the importance of flexibility, collaboration, and a user-centric approach in managing complex workflows. Moving forward, we will continue refining automation, exploring new integrations for enhanced data visualisation, and aligning our strategies with BAFTA’s inclusivity goals.
If you’re looking to streamline workflows, improve data management, or optimise processes for better outcomes, please reach out. I’d love to discuss how we can solve your challenges and achieve your goals together.
