Vodaphone wins BIG in Fiji

​During my first visit to Fiji, earlier this year, I delivered 5 days of evaluator and team leader training to over 100 evaluators involved in the 2016 Business Excellence Awards programme. I was impressed by the scale of the programme and the commitment demonstrated by the Fiji Business Excellence Awards Secretariat and the National Training & Productivity Centre at the Fiji National University.

Special in my mind is the over 100 individual evaluators who I met during the training sessions. I have been in their position myself so understand the hours of selfless effort needed to undertake this role.

​On 5 November 2016 I returned to attend the awards celebration at the Sheraton Fiji Resort in Nadi. At the awards celebration, Vodaphone Fiji received the top President’s Award. 

Vodaphone Fiji CEO, Pradeep Lal receives the President’s Award from Acting President, Chief Justice Anthony Gates at the 2016 Fiji Business Excellence Awards  

The Fiji Business Excellence awards are designed to improve productivity and quality in organisations in Fiji. At the 1995 Round Table Conference, representatives of the Unions, Employers and Government, met to draw up a roadmap for Fiji’s Productivity Movement. It was here that the idea of implementing a Business Excellence Framework for Fiji was adopted into the Productivity Charter of 1995. The Fiji Business Excellence Awards Secretariat was established administer the Awards program. The vision is to create world-class organisations and to bring a better quality of life for the people of Fiji. This vision goes beyond the competitive performance of organisations to embrace the concept of all in Fiji working together to create a clean, safe, fair, and prosperous society. One of the principal strategies for achieving the vision is to encourage organisations to use the Awards framework and assessment process for organisational improvement.

The aims of the Fiji Business Excellence Awards are to;

1. Help organisations attain world‐class quality in products and services.
2. Provide recognition to excellent organisations.
3. Provide a framework for sustainable improvement through quality management.

 
As acting President, Chief Justice Anthony Gates, said in his address,
“The Fiji Business Excellence Awards, as many of us know, promotes awareness of performance excellence as an increasingly important element in competitiveness. It also promotes the sharing of successful performance strategies and the benefits derived from using these strategies.”

​The Fiji Business Excellence Awards have come a long way from its humble beginnings from the 2 applicants it began with in 1998, to 25 in 2016. As the Fiji business excellence framework is aligned to the US Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, the Fiji President’s Award is benchmarked to Baldrige Award. This places Vodaphone Fiji in the same world class performing organisations as US Baldrige Award winners.

Acting President Chief Justice Anthony Gates with the Vodaphone team 

​In addition to the President’s award, organisations are awarded the Business Excellence Prize, Achievement level, and Commitment level. During the 2016 celebration, a total of 23 organisations were recognised by receiving awards. To date around 194 awards have been presented to 93 organisations in Fiji.

Michael Voss with guests celebrating at the 2016 Fiji Business Excellence Awards dinner

Congratulations go to the National Training & Productivity Centre at the Fiji National University for running the awards programme and all those evaluators and judges involved in making the awards a success.

The Acting President remarked
“The Business Excellence journey is a never ending one. In fact, the journey itself is the destination.
I would also like to call on previous winners of the Fiji Business Excellence Awards, in conjunction with the NTPC to spearhead exchange of ideas and to host meetings for best practice sharing. This notion ties in well with the theme of this year; “Synergize to Innovate & Grow”. Increasing Fiji’s productivity is not the responsibility of National Training & Productivity Centre or government alone.  We are all equally responsible for it. If we are to improve our quality of life, then each one of us must be committed to the same goal.”

It is a credit to the Fiji Business Excellence Awards Secretariat and the National Training & Productivity Centre at Fiji National University for their commitment to this programme over the past 18 years. ​Fiji is a better place for their efforts.