Innpacked Training, based in Bournemouth, has won the ‘Door Supervisor Training Award’ in the 2008 BII NITAs, the annual national training awards for the licensed retail industry. BII, the industry’s professional body, has today announced the winners of these prestigious awards which recognise and reward training excellence, via a live broadcast from its website. The victorious category winners – including Innpacked – will each be presented with their awards and receive the recognition they truly deserve in front of an audience of 1,000 top industry representatives at the BII Annual Lunch at The Grosvenor House, London, in May. The awards were hotly contested with entrants vying for the category titles from among restaurant groups, pub companies, breweries, supermarkets, convenience stores, colleges, training companies, professional trainers and individual licensees.
Each of the 41 shortlisted entrants has been assessed by a two person judging panel; one an experienced industry practitioner and the other from an academic background. Typically, judges are experts in the licensed retail sector and the field of training and development, and are experienced in the rigorous BII NITA judging process. The process involves close examination of the entrants’ training practice and judges have remarked that, yet again, the standard of entries has been extremely high. Judges were impressed by Innpacked‘s overall approach to training undertaken as well as the flexibility and accessibility of the approach. They also commented that there is clear evidence of a well developed business model that is attracting demand from a range of public and private sector market groups, locally and nationally.
BII Director of Marketing Sue Medhurst commented: “In this unprecedented economic climate, when purse strings are being squeezed, it’s even more important to commit to staff development so we’re delighted to see so many businesses investing time and money in their training activities. Winning a BII NITA is the ultimate endorsement of training excellence and the impressive response to this year’s NITAs clearly shows the level of commitment to training excellence as businesses see the benefits to both the company and the individuals within it.”
The NITAs are an important mechanism to raise the standards of training across the licensed retail sector and are a tool for companies to benchmark the effectiveness of their training against others in the sector. All shortlisted entrants receive feedback from the judges and this enables them to improve their training offering even further in the future. Judges will also select a winner for the Supreme Award, which is presented to the person or organisation they consider has done the most to promote the benefits of training across the licensed retail sector, and this will be announced at the BII Annual Lunch in May.