Friday 22nd February 2019
Bestway recognises colleagues across the business at its annual Performance Awards 2018
Last night; The Marriott Grosvenor Square Hotel, saw 500 Bestway Wholesale colleagues and supply partners come together at a glittering ceremony to celebrate the 2018 Bestway Performance Awards, which recognise talent and excellence across company’s employees for the 2017/18 financial year.
The highly sought-after awards were judged with representatives from each department, and saw 17 esteemed colleagues and teams, and three suppliers, recognised for their extraordinary achievements, including ‘Driver of the Year’, ‘Depot of the Year’, ‘Head Office Colleague of the Year’ and ‘Supplier of the Year’.
Managing Director, Dawood Pervez said:
“For over 14 years, our Performance Awards have been central to Bestway in recognising the commitment and exceptional talent we are proud to see within our own, and our suppliers’, businesses.
“The awards are all about championing our people. Whilst there has to be winners within the awards process, every one of our nominees, chosen by their colleagues, are winners. We are enormously proud of our team and wholly committed to ensuing Bestway remains a great place to work, offering strong careers, alongside development, progression and reward.”
The winners for each of the people categories are as follows:
Driver of the Year - Stephen Horgan, Bestway Plymouth.
Stephen trained with Bestway to become an 18-tonne lorry driver, from a 7.5 tonne driver. He is often the key link between depot and customer, finding new customers and carrying the latest promotional brochures in his cab, and this has led to increased sales for the depot.
Picker of the Year - Kaushal Kaushal, Bestway Abbey Road
Kaushal constantly has the highest picking average in our flagship depot in Abbey Road, despite it being one of the largest depots in our estate. He is a great example to the team and has trained many new recruits. Kaushal’s attitude, attendance and work rate are good and he is a valuable and respected member of the team.
Receptionist of the Year - Ornuma Burke, Bestway Leeds
Starting her career with Bestway Wholesale as a part-time cleaner, Ornuma retrained as a receptionist and competed a course in Customer Service. Now Ornuma is a crucial member of the Leeds depot team, co-ordinating customers with delivery drivers and she managed to keep the depot reception satisfaction score above 90%.
Depot Colleague of the Year – Akhtar Ali, Bestway Romford
Akhtar is the longest serving member of the Bestway Romford depot, having joined in 2000. He often works weekends and has been a great help creating the depot HUB marshalling area. Akhtar has also undertaken many projects in the depot to help improve the customer journey.
Customer Satisfaction - Batleys Leeds
The Batleys Leeds depot team always strive to give customers an enjoyable shopping experience, using their knowledge and friendly approach to build relationships which make them stand out from competitors. This depot achieved an average customer satisfaction score of 93.4%, the top score in the country across the year, demonstrating consistent customer experience and customer service excellence.
Community award - Bestpets, for their ‘watch the birdie’ campaign
The Bespets team worked with suppliers to put together a ‘Wild bird-watching starter kit’ for schools who were taking part in the Big School Bird Watch. The Bestpets depots got involved promoting the activity to pet retailers, who in turn advertised the campaign in their shops and asked consumers to choose a local school to receive a free kit. The campaign generated local engagement in the community for retailers, with Bespets at the forefront of the activity and also gained positive PR coverage.
Unsung Hero Award - Debra Allen, Multiple Account Manager
Nominated for this award for the second year in a row, Debra has continued to manage one of our most demanding retail customers this year – Select & Save. Supporting the growth of the customers estate from 31 to 130 stores in 14 months, Debra has also increased sales from £50k to £500k. A true unsung hero, when Debra found out she was nominated for this award, she responded ‘but I was only doing my job’.
Values Award - Herchelle Perez-Terrado, Licensed Controller
Herchelle’s interpersonal skills are brilliant and she always keeps all departments involved, demonstrating we are one family – one of Bestway’s core values. She always hits her deadlines despite a challenging workload and visits customers to develop her category approach. Herchelle is also a leader of team activities, organising bake sales and raising funds for charity.
Customer sales representative, at Bestway Vans Direct - Rob Spears, Snacks
Rob joined Bestway Vans when it first launched in January 2018 and had brought a vast knowledge of both sweets and snacks. He averages sales of £1,500 a day, selling to 100 customers in Essex. Rob is a real team player, working late to support others and training several new members of the team.
Catering salesperson of the year – Syed Shah, regional account manager, London
Syed manages our largest and most demanding catering account and does this with diligence and credibility. In addition, he generated £400k of sales from a further 14 new catering customers in London, growing sales of his existing accounts by 159%. Well done Syed.
Customer service centre team member of the year - Linda Ross, customer advisor
We receive regular customer feedback about how helpful and knowledgeable Linda is – she even receives flowers thanking her for outstanding service. Lisa consistently sells up to £2,000 a week, despite her role being more customer service than telesales focused, and she also has 100% attendance – her positivity rubs off on everyone around her.
Pet salesperson of the year - Cheryll Flanagan, Regional sales development manager
Cheryll has brought on an impressive total of 65 new customers since joining the Bestpets business and her commandment is ‘the customer comes first’ – no matter how big or small they are. Her strategy is care for customers and the sales and loyalty will follow.
Retail salesperson of the year - Hitesh Mehta, territory sales manager for London
Hitesh is a key member of the London sales team and last year alone obtained 43 new retail customers worth £3 million pounds, growing his overall sales by £4.8M. this is growth on top of the £6.9M he achieved in the prior year – an outstanding achievement unmatched by any other territory sales manager in the company. A true deserver of this sales award.
Head Office Colleague of the Year - Pretash Patel, Assistant property and transport manager
Pretash has standardised processes across the company and supports the depots with transport compliance and operating procedures. He has been important in the depot Hub project and in co-ordinating the intake of various customers, supporting new business acquisitions by renewing and consolidating the fleet
Head Office Department of the Year - The Customer Contact Centre, Perth.
The contact centre has taken on a lot of additional responsibility, and the team have embraced the change - transforming from a telesales function for one part of the business, to managing customer service for the whole business including retail, catering and Pet customers. The team are often the first point of contact for any customer calling into the business and they offer a fantastic level of customer service and are respected by colleagues across the business.
Depot Manager of the Year - Zahid Akbar and his operations manager Habib-ur Rehman, Bestway Manchester
The Manchester depot team live by the quote “The aim of education is knowledge, not of facts but of values”. Key to the success is engaging the team in the depot’s goals and measures, recognising individual contributions and successes and training the team to ensure they know what is expected of them – encouraging everyone to practise and learn from mistakes. Operations Manager, Habib, played a lead part in the depot’s successful performance across the whole year, joined by Zahid in the GM position for the second half of the year.
Depot of the year - Batleys Liverpool
No strangers to picking up awards, Batleys Liverpool is an excellent depot. The depot became a hub last year with increased delivered business and Xtra Local customers. Last year the team increased sales to catering customers by £512k and increased Xtra Local sales by 11.9%. The depot has a thorough induction process for new team members and organises events for colleagues and their families. They have also kept availability above 80% consistently. Well done to the whole Batleys Liverpool team.
About the awards:
The Bestway Wholesale Performance Awards 2018, which are the 14th year that these awards have existed, recognise the company’s colleagues and suppliers for their achievements, commitment and hard work in the financial year July 2017 to June 2018. The sales results, customer satisfaction scores, team work achievements, community efforts and commitment to the Bestway values, have all been recognised across the board with these Awards. All the finalists have been nominated by their colleagues and winners selected by a panel of employee judges. There are 17 colleague awards and three supplier awards in total.
The three supplier award winners were:
- Most improved supplier - Lucozade, Ribena, Suntory.
- Most innovative supplier - Diageo Great Britain, for their Gordon’s Pink Gin
- Supplier of the year – Coca-Cola European Partners