Royal recognition for UK businesses upskilling their employees

by Aug 15, 2018Awards news

We are happy to announce the names of 48 businesses commended by the 2018 Princess Royal Training Awards. The prestigious Awards honour UK companies including River Island, John Lewis, RBS, the Royal Air Force and GSK for their outstanding training and development programmes, which have directly resulted in commercial success.

From apprenticeship schemes to gamified e-learning to health and wellbeing programmes, each of the recipients has displayed a unique dedication to developing their workforce. For retailer River Island, their training programme for 1,000 managers has transformed the company’s people strategy, while GSK’s acceleration of high performing female staff has increased the number of women in leadership. RBS has been awarded for a customer service scheme that has been completed by 51,000 employees from the CEO down and for the first time, the Royal Air Force has implemented mental resilience training into their renowned Eagles Scheme.

The full list of recipients includes public and private sector businesses of all sizes, from areas including hospitality, banking and financial services, retail, education, manufacturing, not for profit, and healthcare. The Award recipients, who were all subject to a rigorous assessment process, will receive their Awards from HRH The Princess Royal at a ceremony in October.

Commenting on this year’s recipients, Chris Jones, Chief Executive of the City & Guilds Group said: ‘Congratulations to all 48 organisations who have achieved the Princess Royal Training Awards standard of excellence this year. Once again, it is evidence of the very real benefits that investing in staff development can bring to employers, large and small, private, public and not for profit. At a time of increasing economic uncertainty and reduced investment into workforce development it is great to see critical business issues being addressed through impactful L&D. Through the Awards we highlight excellent examples of training that have already proved to be effective and we encourage others to build on their success.’

The Princess Royal Training Awards, delivered by the City & Guilds Group, are now in their third year. Each of the 90 applications were assessed against three Hallmarks of Excellence by the Princess Royal Training Awards Commission, which comprised of HRH The Princess Royal and seven leading figures in the business and training community.

For the full list of recipients and their training schemes, please see the 2018 recipients page.

1 Comment

  1. Russ Haines

    Delighted to see the Defence Sector represented here and particularly to the Royal Air Force (RAF) who are celebrating their Centenary. Mental resilience is something of which the Armed Forces are renowned for but it doesn’t happen by accident – the quality of the training they receive is extremely good and it is great to see this being recognised externally.

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