One of the most common questions we get is about categories. No matter how many categories we have, people are always suggesting new categories. As the person who’s job it is to come up with the list of categories (which is then refined by the staff at Harrisburg Magazine) I can tell you I’ve heard it all. And most suggestions come from businesses who wish to participate.
And while I’d love to offer specific categories for every possible business, it would mean having at least 500 categories. It would take days for people to vote!
So what do we do? Well, we’ve decided to add some special categories that will allow for wide-spread participation and include businesses that have not been included in the past. We are calling these our Harrisburg Community Group. Here are the categories:
Customer Service: the business that goes above and beyond to provide customers the best experience with their company.
Commitment to Harrisburg: the business that has done a lot for Harrisburg. Think of this as a “good citizenship” award for businesses.
Value: the business that provides you the most for your money.
Generous Spirit: the business that is very generous to the community. It may be one that does fundraisers for charities or who has its employees volunteer their time.
Quality: the business that consistently provides good products. It could be a restaurant with really good food or a plumber that never fails to fix the leaky pipe.
Environmentally Friendly: the business is doing things that recycles, finds ways to reduce what they are using, plants trees to reduce their carbon footprint or similar things.
Entrepreneurial Spirit: the business that takes risks, finds innovative new ways to solve problems and are constantly making changes to improve their company.
Small Business (1 to 10 employees): A business that has 10 or fewer employees or whose employee hours equal less than 350 hours a week. (In other words, if you have 11 part-time employees that work 20 hours a week, you’d still qualify as a “small” business.)
Medium Business (11 to 50 employees): A business that has 50 or fewer employees or whose employee hours equal less than 1750 hours a week.
Large Business (51-100 employees): A business that has 100 or fewer employees.
Extra Large Business (101+ employees): A business that has more than 100 employees.
Hopefully, this will stop all the “category envy” that occurs at this time of year. If you are interested in advertising your company to win one of these categories, please take a moment to fill out this form: