RedBalloon Hat Trick of wins

RedBalloon scoops the pool, winning Ernst &Young Industry Entrepreneur, Deloitte Fast 50 and AHRI HR Practioner Awards all in one day.

Founding Director Naomi Simson was awarded named Ernst & Young Industry Entrepreneur of the Year in the prestigious awards. The E&Y judges commented: “Naomi Simson has shown true entrepreneurial spirit, vision and passion in creating a new industry and way of gifting. She has demonstrated great self-awareness through her ability to step back and work on the business, not in the business – a rare quality for a founder. Naomi is also a wonderful and active role model for female entrepreneurs.”

Naomi commented: “Receiving this award is an important milestone on our journey to delivering two million meaningful experiences. It’s an honour to be recognised and one I hope will be an influence on the wider community; to working parents and business leaders looking to create truly flexible work places and to the next generation of young women seeking positive role models."

Previous Australian winners include the entrepreneurial brains behind businesses such as Atlassian, Carsales.com, and Res Med, while past World Entrepreneur Of The Year winners have included the founders of Amazon and IKEA.

As we say, as we do

Proving that we practise what we preach, our employee experience manager Megan Bromley was named the Australian Human Resources Institute’s (AHRI) HR Practitioner of the Year, receiving the Dave Ulrich award for her contribution to business outcomes through HR practises.

Bromley’s entrepreneurial approach to RedBalloon’s reward and recognition, L&D and recruitment practices has enabled the company to achieve an engagement score of over 90 per cent three years in a row, and been named one of six Hewitt Best Employers in 2009. RedBalloon has also made the top 50 in the BRW Best Places to Work survey three years running. “It was an amazing feeling to be recognised as part of this award, and I believe all of the success we have had at Redballoon with our employee experience will one day lead to more organisations embracing a similar approach, rather than viewing humans as resources. I believe reward and recognition is so important because everything starts with really understanding who your people are. Not just their job titles, but getting to know them as individuals. When you step back from all the theory and hype, it's as simple as that," Bromley said.

It all means growth

Awards may be nice and shiny on the shelf, but the real success is the impact had on business performance. If disengaged employees cost Australian and New Zealand businesses in the region of $48 billion each year, the knowledge that we have an engaged team and an entrepreneurial founder stands the business in good stead.  Significantly, the RedBalloon blended learning solution, GROW, which AHRI HR winner Bromley devised and implemented in 2011, achieved a significant overachievementin business performance: over 100% growth in EBITA and over 70% in Christmas sales growth. Which popped RedBalloon on the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 list. Again.

Check out the other Awards RedBalloon has been humbled to receive.

Author: Matt Geraghty, RedBalloon

Date: 27/11/2011