The education sector came together on Thursday, 5 June to honour outstanding individuals and organisations in skills education at the City & Guilds’ prestigious Lion Awards.
The ceremony celebrated the country’s most inspiring achievers who have accomplished extraordinary results through practical learning. The ceremony is the culmination of the coveted Medals for Excellence regional awards programme. All medallists are shortlisted for 14 Lion Awards.
A big congratulations to Nigel Dobbs, from A Schulmans, Crumlin Plant who won the overall Lion Award for ILM Learner of the Year. Nigel is the production manager at A Schulmans, Crumlin Plant. He has worked at the plant for 34 years and is responsible for three production shift managers operating a 24-hours shift pattern and 60 production staff.
Nigel was nominated by Palladium Training for his outstanding leadership approach. His manager noted that Nigel’s always been dedicated to his job, but had a hard time delegating to his colleagues. As a result, he often worked long hours. Nigel decided to try an Essential Management Skills programme, which is endorsed by the Institute of Leadership & Management.
He enthusiastically defined and applied a range of action plans with his team with the involvement and contribution of this 3 shift managers and colleagues from other departments. He set up a ‘war room’ where he mapped out a departmental battle plan to improve the business. What is remarkable is that Nigel radically changed his behaviour and approach to gain buy in from his managers and peers. He not only was able to help his team, he was also responsible for a 17% increase his plant’s efficiency.
Speaking about his learning Nigel said: ‘I quickly realised the need to change and adopt a different leadership approach. Working closely with my shift managers I have noticed a more enthusiastic and committed approach to carrying out their work and achieving goals.’
The award was presented by TV personality and outdoor adventurer Helen Skelton. Accepting the award on Nigel’s behalf was John Mayne, Managing Director of Palladium.
Read more about this year’s Lion Award winners
Medals for Excellence winners
We would like to congratulate the ILM Medals for Excellence winners. There were many impressive learners this year and the following learners have been recognised for their outstanding performance across four categories.
Linda Purvis: ILM Learner of the Year – Coaching
(Nominating centre: Management Training and Development)
Linda works as an Advisor for Larne centre offering Enhanced Support to the long-term unemployed. Since doing the ILM Level 3 Certificate in Workplace Mentoring, Linda’s job outcome and performance target has increased significantly. Her retention rate is 85% but she consistently achieves around 90-95%. Linda directly helps to generate extra income for her company through mentoring of her clients. Out of 213 clients seen in the past six months, 79 have found jobs and Linda mentored 70% of these personally.
Alison Fry: ILM Learner of the Year – Leadership & Management
(Nominating centre: Truro & Penwith College Business Centre)
Alison Fry has made an outstanding contribution to the continued success of Trescobeas surgery. Her meticulous and radical changes to many of the surgery’s processes has meant that despite rising demand and falling budgets, the surgery has continued to improve patient care. Her analysis of the Quality Outcomes Framework identified considerable wastage and duplication arising from multiple patient appointments and poor administrative procedures. Implementing her ILM Change Management Project as part of her ILM Level 3 Certificate has brought a 50% increase in income for no extra resource amounting to over £60,000 a year.
Simona Ivascuic: ILM Learner of the Year – International
(Nominating centre: The Vocational College)
Simona Ivascuic is the general manager of the hotel ‘Acasa La Dracula’ in Transylvania, Romania. She has brought key improvements to her business while working for the ILM Development programme. Her successes included reducing by 20% the time taken to answer accommodation reservations. Simona inherited an unmotivated and disparate team who were not working in any form of cohesive effort, she reduced conflict within her team and ensured each member set out of their own objectives for the business. Simona also increased income dramatically from 2012-2013 through analysing the value of each booking, and focusing on opportunities to up sell. Trip Advisor ranked La Dracula 16 in November 2013 compared to 43 in January of that year.
