We place a great deal of pride in our awards and this is something that is shared by the HR community. Speaking to past winners, we hear about the impact these accolades have had within their teams - recognised for collaborative effort, strategy and hard work.
Best HR Team Award 2018
North West England’s housing and regeneration group Torus won Best HR Team in 2018 for an ambitious OD team. Threats facing the business meant that the team of 16 had to balance the group’s financial position while protecting business, customers and staff.
Over a period of four years, they successfully completed the group’s restructure and incited change affecting 850 members of staff contributing to an overall cost reduction of £17 million.
Penny Aspden, group organisational development director at Torus, told HR magazine: “Winning the Best HR Team at the HR Excellence awards in 2018 was a wonderful way for the OD and communications team to celebrate several years of challenging work - realigning teams and transforming the culture of two organisations to become one following a merger process.
The award lifted the spirits and confidence of the team, whose work is often behind the scenes. It gave them the recognition they deserve both internally and externally.
Importantly it has reinforced how important talent development, business partnering, collaboration and having a sound infrastructure is in effecting change. This is still a key focus as Torus amalgamated in 2019 with Liverpool Mutual Homes.
We’re on another exciting transformation journey. The lessons learned from the first experience, especially everything that went well, including the award, are invaluable.”
Best HR Team Award 2016
The people team at FSCS, the UK's statutory compensation scheme, took home 2016’s Best HR Team Award after enacting a culture change at the company that saw the function gain real direction.
Raising the credibility of the function, the team worked to gain HR a voice in the wider company strategy.
David Blackburn, chief people officer at FCSC told HR magazine: “Winning the Best HR Team award in 2016 was a great boost for us.
“We entered as we were very proud of the things, we were doing to make a difference at FSCS, and winning the award reinforced our belief that we were moving in the right direction with our approach.
Crucially, it also gave us the confidence to aim even higher going forward. Three years later the People Team has gone from strength to strength, with the launch of a new People Strategy encompassing our work in HR, Learning and Development, Engagement and Facilities. We look forward to entering more awards this year.”
Enter your team for this year’s HR Excellence awards here.
If you would like to nominate someone for HRD of the Year, let us know here.
The HR Excellence Awards will now be taking place on 26 January 2021 in light of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
