Employees win company award for championing diversity
Standout employees at UK Power Networks have been recognised with a prestigious company award for their work championing diversity at the electricity firm.
Louise Parsons and Harshil Sumaria jointly won the ‘Everyone Matters Champion’ prize at the company’s annual LOV (Living Our Values) award ceremony that took place in the world-famous Camden Roundhouse.
The pair were cited with improving workforce diversity after they were nominated by fellow colleagues, which runs through the company’s DNA and is one of their core values.
Louise Parsons from Potters Bar in London is one of the company’s Learning and Development specialists who strive to improve, support, and develop colleagues across the business.
A veteran employee of 24 years, she works tirelessly at the Borehamwood office and her unrelenting focus on bringing neurodiversity to the forefront of the business has dramatically improved employee engagement and wellbeing.
Louise said: “It was amazing to win this award, I was really shocked and just overwhelmed that, my colleagues actually took the time to nominate me for this.
“It was a joint win with Harshil, who is a fantastic colleague, and he does so much work for the employee community.”
She added: “We started this last year where we raised some awareness sessions with our field staff and from conversations with from those employees, we found there's a lot of employees that have a neurodiverse condition or are carers for people with those conditions.
“What we wanted to do is raise more awareness, understand those colleagues who actually face challenges, so we engaged a professional trainer who has trained 45 employees so far and they've also signed up to be allies for neurodiverse people within the company we've arranged for our technical trainers to be more aware so they can adapt and provide more support and we've also got a help page so they can get more information what the company's doing before example accessible software.”
Harshil Sumaria, from Wembley works for UK Power Networks’ Distribution System Operator in London as a strategy and performance engineer – meaning he works hard to make customers get the best value for money by optimising the way electricity is used on the network.
He also volunteers for the UK Power Networks’ EMPower Community, which he is now a chair of after four years at the company.
Harshil said: “It means a lot to get that recognition, and people are always so lovely about it. It's just really cool because it's a volunteer role and it’s not often volunteering roles are recognised, so it's nice to get that.
“I care a lot about performance and the way you achieve high performance is by having the best people in every job and making them feel like they can give their best.
“I think EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion) is the most important thing as you're getting the best people in the roles. If you want to be high performing, you need to have diverse people, and they need to feel at home.
“The only reasons I've got this award is because EMPower has done well and my amazing committee who work tirelessly.”
The 2024 edition saw 1,974 employees out of the 6000-strong workforce nominated by their colleagues – from field staff to office-based staff after exemplifying UK Power Networks’ values which include integrity and continuous improvement.
From the nearly 2000 nominations, senior management teams whittled it down to 211 colleagues who were up for individual and team awards.
Chief executive Basil Scarsella said: “These employees are the best of the best. The atmosphere was brilliant, they had their partners there and its recognition of everyone’s performance across the company. We aim to be an employer of choice, with teams that help each other and these awards celebrate that UK Power Networks continues to be a high performer year in year out.”
The LOV Awards have proved to be a success for employee engagement as there was a 17% increase in nominations compared to 2023, which had 1,677 nominations.
Published 25/09/2024
Louise Parsons and Harshil Sumaria jointly won the ‘Everyone Matters Champion’ prize at the company’s annual LOV (Living Our Values) award ceremony that took place in the world-famous Camden Roundhouse.
The pair were cited with improving workforce diversity after they were nominated by fellow colleagues, which runs through the company’s DNA and is one of their core values.
Louise Parsons from Potters Bar in London is one of the company’s Learning and Development specialists who strive to improve, support, and develop colleagues across the business.
A veteran employee of 24 years, she works tirelessly at the Borehamwood office and her unrelenting focus on bringing neurodiversity to the forefront of the business has dramatically improved employee engagement and wellbeing.
Louise said: “It was amazing to win this award, I was really shocked and just overwhelmed that, my colleagues actually took the time to nominate me for this.
“It was a joint win with Harshil, who is a fantastic colleague, and he does so much work for the employee community.”
She added: “We started this last year where we raised some awareness sessions with our field staff and from conversations with from those employees, we found there's a lot of employees that have a neurodiverse condition or are carers for people with those conditions.
“What we wanted to do is raise more awareness, understand those colleagues who actually face challenges, so we engaged a professional trainer who has trained 45 employees so far and they've also signed up to be allies for neurodiverse people within the company we've arranged for our technical trainers to be more aware so they can adapt and provide more support and we've also got a help page so they can get more information what the company's doing before example accessible software.”
Harshil Sumaria, from Wembley works for UK Power Networks’ Distribution System Operator in London as a strategy and performance engineer – meaning he works hard to make customers get the best value for money by optimising the way electricity is used on the network.
He also volunteers for the UK Power Networks’ EMPower Community, which he is now a chair of after four years at the company.
Harshil said: “It means a lot to get that recognition, and people are always so lovely about it. It's just really cool because it's a volunteer role and it’s not often volunteering roles are recognised, so it's nice to get that.
“I care a lot about performance and the way you achieve high performance is by having the best people in every job and making them feel like they can give their best.
“I think EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion) is the most important thing as you're getting the best people in the roles. If you want to be high performing, you need to have diverse people, and they need to feel at home.
“The only reasons I've got this award is because EMPower has done well and my amazing committee who work tirelessly.”
The 2024 edition saw 1,974 employees out of the 6000-strong workforce nominated by their colleagues – from field staff to office-based staff after exemplifying UK Power Networks’ values which include integrity and continuous improvement.
From the nearly 2000 nominations, senior management teams whittled it down to 211 colleagues who were up for individual and team awards.
Chief executive Basil Scarsella said: “These employees are the best of the best. The atmosphere was brilliant, they had their partners there and its recognition of everyone’s performance across the company. We aim to be an employer of choice, with teams that help each other and these awards celebrate that UK Power Networks continues to be a high performer year in year out.”
The LOV Awards have proved to be a success for employee engagement as there was a 17% increase in nominations compared to 2023, which had 1,677 nominations.
Published 25/09/2024