Gold Award for Skills

In June 2011, Site Manager Tim Green was presented with the Chemical Industry Association (CIA) “Gold Standard Skills” Award at a national awards ceremony at the University of Birmingham’s Great Hall.

The CIA awards are the annual celebration of innovation, achievement and entrepreneurialism in one of Britain’s most dynamic and significant business sectors (the chemical industry remains the UK’s Number 1 manufacturing exporter), and are the most established and influential awards in the industry.

Steve Elliott, Chief Executive of the CIA, paid tribute, saying; “Our award categories seek to capture the very best illustrations of leadership, inspiration and innovation and they both recognise and celebrate outstanding individual, collective and corporate performance within our industry. The CIA awards are about recognising excellence; they offer tremendous encouragement and visibility to an industry which is largely unsung, all of the entrants should be proud of their success.”

The purpose of the “Gold Standard Skills Award” is to recognise the employer who has done the most to contribute to the acquisition of skills by the company’s workforce through working towards the Cogent Gold Standard.

Site Manager, Tim Green, wass delighted to have his team’s efforts recognised: “This “Gold Standard Skills Award” is the result of some very hard work, innovative thinking and careful planning by our Training Department and winning this award is a phenomenal achievement.  The programme is helping us to further recognise and reward innovation and excellence in performance.  It encourages a continuous learning approach which as well as developing the skill-level of current employees, also helps us as a business to attract and retain the best staff.”

Hilary Wright, Training Specialist, developed the “MOVE beyond excellence” programme, fostering an environment of continuous improvement in order to achieve company objectives and targets – a key method of driving the programme is the up-skilling and training of staff   As Hilary explains:  “It is a holistic approach to personal development.  It focuses on developing competencies, skills and knowledge, targeting seven key areas identified as being the most critical to job performance and business effectiveness.

The areas covered are initial training, occupational competence, cross-skilling, business improvement, enhancement and enrichment opportunities and continuous development. The programme was launched last year and has rapidly become the cornerstone of employee development within the company.”

Cogent CEO Joanna Woolf said:

“The Award is much deserved, demonstrating that skills development underpinned by the Gold Standard leads to excellence across a wide range of disciplines and a continuous learning approach to developing employees.”

Cogent is the expert, employer-led Sector Skills Council (licensed by the Government) delivering strategic solutions to the skills needs of the chemicals, pharmaceuticals, oil and gas, nuclear, polymer and petroleum industries.