HR Excellence Awards 2011

Teams from London and Dinton joined forces to produce Mark Allen Group's biggest awards event of the year, last month – The HR Excellence Awards 2011.

Despite the fact the HR magazine editorial, sales, design, production and events teams are split across the two sites, staff pulled together to produce a record breaking awards, attracting more category entries than ever before, and hosting a glittering gala dinner with 500 of the top HR practitioners in the country in attendance.

The awards were held in the Hilton Hotel on London's park lane and the proceedings were hosted by comedian, Mock The Week panelist and star of the hit BBC show Outnumbered, Hugh Dennis – who, with his unique brand of dry wit had the audience in stitches with gags ranging from HR puns to jokes about sheep.

Dennis was supported by the National Lottery's 'voice of the balls' Alan Dedicoat, who announced the shortlisted entries, highly commended companies and, of course, the all important winners.

Staff in Dinton and London, headed up by the magazine's publisher and editor Siân Harrington and awards and events manager Edward Wyre, ran the entry process and judging and produced the awards in-house along with designing the trophies, publishing the menus, programmes, seating plans and promotional material, as well as the exclusive 40-page book of the night, presented to all guests at the event and published in the bumper July issue of HR magazine.

The commercial team handled the sponsorship of the event bringing in a host of new sponsors.

And feedback from guests, so far has been glowing. One HR director wrote to say: " Thank you for a fantastic evening at the HR Excellence Awards. I thought everything went brilliantly."

Another added: "The awards event was an excellent experience. Thank you and I look forward to watching you continue to take the magazine from strength to strength."

The big prizewinner of the evening was the Royal College of Nursing, which scooped the awards for best HR team, best health and wellbeing strategy and the HR Excellence gold award – the best of the best.

The following day the editorial team on Independent Nurse magazine published the news of the RCN's win before its competitor Nursing Standard, which happens to be the RCN's own publication.

The HR Excellence Awards marked even better news for the Mark Allen Group, given this is the first time the company has run the awards since it acquired HR magazine from Haymarket Media Group in November 2010.

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