Winners of Enlightened Employer awards
Fourfront Group wins Enlightened Employer Award
Fourfront Group has been recognised as a progressive employer, winning the Thames Valley Women in Business Enlightened Employer Award. The awards celebrate successful women who have excelled in their specific business and profession, and organisations that have encouraged and enabled women to achieve success within their chosen careers. Fourfront was presented with the award at a gala dinner at Oakley Hall, near Basingstoke on 10 September.
Fourfront Group operates in the construction industry and in particular the fit-out sector, an industry with only 24 per cent of women on FTSE 100 boards. Small companies tend to be less diverse and as a result, a major source of talent, innovation and business intuition is not being tapped into. To address this issue, Fourfront’s Head of HR Pippa Savory (pictured above) launched Women in Fourfront last year – a 10-month programme of group workshops and individual coaching aimed at women within the business. Fourfront ran a series of workshops for focusing on: confidence, communication, contribution, credibility and career success. The programme included personal profiling, individual coaching sessions, a tailored development plan and 360 degree feedback sessions.
The programme has resulted in more women securing promotion and initiatives/ideas that originated in the programme are now being implemented group-wide. Building on the success of the first intake, a second programme launches shortly. “We have seen a significant change in how some women in our business perform and interact with others, plus it’s unleashed unprecedented interest in the overall progression of our business,” explained Savory. “As a result, we have seen the number of women within the business increasing to 26 per cent and hope the second programme will increase that still further. “
“I am delighted that we have been recognised by this prestigious award,” added Aki Stamatis, Fourfront’s chairman. “Encouraging and developing all sections of the workforce is not only the right thing to do but makes complete commercial sense. I’m already looking forward to seeing the results of the second programme.”
