Member Article

CIPD recognition for Waterstons

Durham based IT and business consultancy, Waterstons Ltd, has won the ’’SME Excellence in HR & D“ category at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), North East of England, Human Resources and Development Awards.

The Awards, which took place at the Newcastle Gateshead Hilton on 22 May 2014, were attended by people from across the North East’s business community in a celebration of individual and team success in HR & D and saw many organisations praised for their achievements.

Waterstons’ Lesley Renteurs, HR Officer, who collected the CIMA sponsored award on the evening, said: “We recognise that our people are our most valuable asset and always look for new ways in which we can empower them and support them in their career. Over the past 12 months we have completely overhauled our review system and introduced a management development programme; we’ve also introduced a continuous professional development strategy; it’s been a lot of work but it’s really paid off and it’s great for this to be recognised with an award from the CIPD.”

Gulzari Babber, immediate past-President, of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA), who presented Waterstons with the award said: “I was delighted to present the award for SME Excellence in HR & D to Waterstons. The firm has demonstrated a clear business strategy and commitment in this area, from director leadership and appraisals, through to personality profiling, individual training plans and workshops, and has an expanding graduate recruitment programme. It was a thoroughly deserved award for excellence in this area.”

Waterstons began life in a basement office in Durham in 1994 with a team of just three people and is now over 85 strong with two offices in Durham and one in London.

Renteurs continued, “Our team has increased significantly over the past few years and, as we continue to grow, the team is becoming more geographically disparate. This has posed new challenges in terms of maintaining our values and culture throughout the business, something that we consider to be very important. I’m happy that we are achieving this objective and it is something we will continue to focus on.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Amy Crimmens .