Member Article

Awards to showcase North's most excellent organisations

Organisations aspiring to be best in class in the north of England are being encouraged to showcase their achievements in an excellence awards scheme won last year by a world-class manufacturer of medical equipment from Sheffield, JRI Orthopaedics.

The awards, open to entries until 29 April, are organised by North of England Excellence (NoEE), a not-for-profit organisation which aims to support the leaders of the north’s dynamic modern cities to unlock investment and achieve sustainable growth through a collaborative approach to driving excellence in the Northern Powerhouse.

“Recognising and celebrating excellence is an important part of the continuous improvement journey for organisations. The awards help us to showcase those teams who are helping to make their organisations outstanding and we anticipate the competition this year will be fierce as the appetite for the Northern Powerhouse opportunity gathers momentum,” said NoEE chief executive Andrew Palmer.

NoEE takes a hands-on approach to judging entries to the awards. Teams of assessors visit the organisations to see for themselves how continuous improvement is actively pursued and progress measured. A feedback report is then provided to a panel of independent judges to make their selection of the winners. Eventually this is shared with the entrants to help them refine their processes and procedures, making the awards a useful exercise no matter how each one performs.

In all cases, the judges are looking for a structured and comprehensive approach to performance improvement and organisations from across the public, private and voluntary sectors are encouraged to enter. Previous winners include Merseyrail Electrics (2002), Northumbrian Water, Milliken European Airbag Products, Siemens Transmission & Distribution, Liverpool Direct, Wakefield & District Housing and The Dane Housing Group.

Last year’s overall winner JRI Orthopaedics also won Special Awards for International Trade and Business of the Year. Commenting on NoEE’s excellence model, Chief Operations Officer Jerry Agass said: “I really like the excellence model. I strongly believe in its straightforward concept and I’ve seen for myself that by better understanding the ‘enablers’ of our organisation we have been able to significantly improve our organisational performance.

“Using the framework has helped us develop both strategy and our operational plans; furthermore we really value the assessment review from the team of trained auditors which provides us with an independent review of our progress. At JRI we are increasingly using this model as a backbone for our continual improvement process.

“Winning the Business of the year 2015 was a fantastic accolade, we were immensely proud of our achievement. However we will keep our feet on the ground, the recognition of the award helps to provide all our employees with the knowledge and belief that we are doing the right things; this provides the fuel and confidence to keep us going and look for more areas for improvement.”

Andrew Palmer is confident the north will once again demonstrate its star qualities in 2016: “Our winners are proof that companies operating in the Northern Powerhouse region have a readiness to be best in class, run outstanding operations and, more importantly, achieve sustainable results. Furthermore they are testament to the fact that business excellence not only improves quality and performance but also benefits the bottom line. They showcase the north as the best place to do business, attract top talent and to live, and illustrate how a commitment to the continuous improvement journey brings tangible success in terms of competitiveness, creativity and innovation.”

The NoEE Awards 2016 winners will be announced at a ceremony in Leeds on 6 October 2016.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Helen Kitchen .