Amrita Bhogal of Sunrise Kitchens of Surrey, B.C. has won the Wood Manufacturing Council’s Innovation in Human Resources Award – Individual.
Several months ago, the CKCA was approached by the WMC to see if they wanted to nominate someone for the Human Resources Award – and they did.
CKCA President Mike Slobodian made the announcement during this week’s CKCA Spring Regional in British Columbia, Feb. 3-4.
“The awards gives us an opportunity to recognize, celebrate and inspire innovation and for this award it is in the field of Human Resources,” he said.
“The criteria were for an individual who makes a difference to people or business management, through an innovative HR program or practice. We were asked if the nominee developed a solution to a critical problem in an organization and how their innovative HR solution fosters a training culture, raises the skill levels of workers or promotes a culture of lifelong learner.”
Slobodian said Bhogal more than met all the criteria.
“For all these questions, we said yes for our nominee. The reason we said yes is because CKCA has been working with this individual over the past year.
“They have given their time to help CKCA develop a free tool that will help and potentially revolutionize the culture, meaning the HR, within their company. This person also gives their time freely and is passionate and committed to helping transform the industry starting with their own company.
“This person has taken risk and has been courageous in attempting to do something different that will help the people who work for them and for their business.
“Now they could keep this information all to themselves, but they aren’t doing that. Instead they are happily sharing and helping CKCA to spread these lessons learned across the industry.
“We are all facing skilled labour shortages. In this climate it would not be a surprise if a company wanted to keep their methods or “trade secrets” to themselves in order to protect their own business and keep their employees. But this nominee and their company have not done that. Instead they want to share what they are doing, their lessons learned and help others.
“So for all these reasons CKCA is very proud to have nominated Amrita Bhogal who has presented at our events is continuing to work to finalize a tool that we look forward to launching this year, who writes articles for our newsletters and continues to give.
“We hope that this award today not only says thank you for her work, but also says “keep going and doing this great work for our industry – you are an innovator and while the journey may not always seem easy, know that you are doing good work that our industry is very grateful for.”
Slobodian also thanked the WMC for providing a way for organizations like CKCA to acknowledge and thank innovators in our industry.
“Again congratulations to Amrita. We wish you continued success with all the good work you are doing.”
Other WMC Award winners will be announced in the following weeks.
