Great Place to Work Special Awards: putting their people first

Great Place to Work Ambassador

Annamaria O'Connor, people & culture director, Tayto Snacks
Annamaria O'Connor is the people and culture director for Tayto Snacks, a much-loved Irish brand. O'Connor has played an important role in supporting Tayto's journey over the last number of years towards sustaining a great work culture. Its journey has been underpinned by its three core values: thinking responsibly, acting entrepreneurially and growing together. Working on the principle that great cultures are built on doing the core areas well, Tayto focused on improving communication and involvement, recognition and talent management and development. O'Connor has demonstrated great partnership with the Tayto leadership team and supported them to remain focused on continuously improving the company's work culture over the last number of years.

We at Great Place to Work thank Annamaria for her contribution to the Great Place to Work network and congratulate her on the role she has played within Tayto Snacks' work culture journey so far.

Great Place to Work Team Award

CPL
The CPL team have played a key role within the organisation over the last number of years in building trust levels within their work culture. The role of the team has been crucial in giving ownership and opportunity to employees of all levels to make a difference by working on culture improvement.

CPL engages and recognises its GPTW Champions at local business level and overall organisation level, and places a key emphasis on maintaining and developing an engaging and supportive culture. Amongst other things, a team approach has helped deliver enhanced communications throughout the business, a focused approach to health and wellbeing, and improved career and development mapping for all team members.

Employer Brand Storytelling

Distilled
Distilled is made up of three brands: Done Deal, Daft and Adverts. It is searching for talent in the tech and product area, and competing with many of the big tech firms for talent. It wanted to go to the market with a compelling "why" candidates should chose Distilled over other more well-known brands. Through a collaborative approach with people within Distilled, it crafted clear employer brand pillars: create with purpose, play your part and belong here. With its new employer brand, it initiated an office rebrand and a playbook for its employee value proposition, along with brand pillars and talent personas. Distilled can now go to the talent market with a clear and compelling offering to help it stand out from the crowd.

Hybrid Way of Working Award

ORS
Long before the pandemic, ORS began to wonder and imagine about how moving to a more flexible way of working would be better for its people's wellbeing along with enhancing business performance. It experimented with different ways of working, captured the learnings and experimented again. A flexible way of working has allowed ORS to retain its talent and also attract lots of new talent to help it achieve its ambitious growth goals as a business. ORS believes it's not about where you are – its about what you do. It has created a culture and working environment that its people can thrive in – and flexibility is the key to this.

Work Culture Improvement

PEI
PEI has been a Great Place to Work for a number of years, yet still remains focused on using Great Place to Work data to improve its culture. It uses the following approach when it comes to moving from data into action. Firstly, it looks for patterns in the data, either unexpected or unexplained. It then delves deeper: as data is one-dimensional, it explores and asks questions and uncovers more about the issue through feedback. It then looks to gain understanding and define the issue, after which it creates action plans with timelines and measurements. It then implements and reviews action plans as they progress. PEI continues to show a remarkable commitment to the employee voice and continuous improvement.

Talent Attraction Award

Global Shares
Global Shares is a Clonakilty-based fintech company that is looking to expand its workforce significantly over the next couple of years. It has recognised the importance of clear and authentic storytelling when it comes to attracting the best talent in a competitive space. Global Shares has embraced all forms of social media and print media when it comes to attracting talent, from LinkedIn to Instagram. Its people are key when it comes to promoting Global Shares as a great place to work with a strong emphasis on employee advocacy. Talent wants to hear from other talent when it comes to choosing a place to work. Global Shares has also used the Great Place to Work logo well internally when it comes to talent retention.