BQF Achievement Awards - 2011 Winners

The BQF Achievement Awards are national annual awards for any organisation to gain recognition for role model activity. The judges seek organisations that have an approach that is innovative and different.

Customer Satisfaction - sponsored by Oracle

2011 Winner: Virgin Trains
Virgin Trains is a long-distance, inter-city rail operator that aims to provide a complete service to its customers rather than just taking them to their destination. Their Vision Awareness Programme was started in 2004 and has transformed the organisational culture by making the customer the main priority and focusing its employees on providing excellent customer service. They have empowered staff to act on their own initiative when dealing with customer issues, and this has encouraged them to be innovative in developing their own ideas for improvement.

All of this has resulted in overall customer satisfaction having risen consistently over the last 10 years, with customer complaints decreasing by 90% over a period when passenger journeys have doubled.

2011 Finalist

• Vocalink

Leadership - sponsored by BT

2011 Winner: Phoenix Futures
Phoenix Futures is a leading provider of services for people with drug and alcohol problems in England and Scotland. The organisation needed a refocused vision and mission to deal with the current and future challenges they faced.

Their new focus had five strands: people, quality, financial robustness, growth and service users. The implementation also had a number of special features such as the remuneration of the top 50 executives being linked solely to behaviours and the ‘hands-on' role played by the CEO.

2011 Finalists

• Nationwide Building Society
• SAS UK

Process improvement - sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline

2011 Winner: Co-operative Banking Group
The Co-operative Banking Group is constantly looking to enhance its services, whilst improving efficiency and effectiveness. With tens of thousands of processes involved in serving customers, it is necessary for the organisation to continuously evaluate, improve and manage these processes to meet its vision of being the UK's most admired financial services business by 2013.

Following the merger of the Co-operative Banking Group and Britannia in 2009, a bespoke approach to business and process improvement was developed called co-operative connect. As a result many transformational improvements, with significant positive financial impact, have already been introduced in the first year of the scheme.

2011 Finalists

• GKN Plc
• WhiteConcierge

Sustainable Future - sponsored by TNT Express

2011 Winner: Skanska UK
Skanska is one of the world's leading project development and construction groups with expertise in construction, development of commercial and residential projects and public-private partnerships. The company aims to create sustainable solutions and be a leader in quality, green construction, health and safety, and business ethics. In 2011, the company was named the greenest company across all industries in the Sunday Times Best Green Companies Awards.

Skanska impressed the judges with their review of every project's sustainability achievements, provision of case studies that enable employees to access environmental information and learn best practice, and the setting of sustainability-related objectives for all employees.

2011 Finalists

• Interserve Project Services
• Siemens Motion Control

Find out more about the previous BQF Achievement Awards winners.

2012 Awards

To find how to enter the 2012 BQF Achievement Awards, please contact the Awards Office on 020 7654 5010 or email.