Reflecting on HR at the HRINZ awards

HRINZ continued its tradition of awarding excellence in New Zealand’s HR community at its annual presentation dinner in Wellington late last month. Who stood out this year?

BY Rose Sneyd 10 Dec 2012

As well as recognising good work, the HRINZ HR Awards are designed to provide human resource practitioners with a period for reflection. “It is a programme which is designed to encourage individuals and HR teams to reflect on their experiences, projects and learning,” the HRINZ website states.

Young HR Practitioner of the Year, Charnz Samountry-Weir of Vodafone, said that she found the application process rewarding, and not success alone. “Working in such a fast-paced environment, it was good to just sit back and reflect…and to process it and to think about how much I had achieved in the process of my career,” she said.

As learning and capability development consultant at Vodafone, Samountry-Weir looks after business sales and marketing in order to build capability and to increase productivity.

Samountry-Weir, who has been working at Vodafone for just under four years, said that going the extra mile and developing trusting relationships with senior stakeholders was what distinguished her entry. She also has a strong focus on business success, as well as people. “I really enjoy understanding the business and helping to drive business success through its biggest asset – people,” she said.

Z Energy took out the prize for best HR initiative of the year for their ‘Sharing Everything about the Z Energy Values’ initiative. “Flipping ‘normal’ values development on its head, Z started by first asking their people what mattered to them personally before going through an extensive launch programme,” as reported on the HRINZ website. As well as resulting in a strong personal engagement with the values on the part of employees, there were several business outcomes, including the brand preference measures overtaking a major competitor.

2012 HRINZ HR Award winners: