Contact: Melinda Loew
Deloitte
Media Relations
9322 7146
Contact: Natasha McGuire
The Capital Group
Senior Consultant
(02) 9252 3900
Alec Bashinsky, National Partner People and Performance for professional services firm Deloitte has been awarded Human Resources Leader of the Year at the 2006 Human Capital Leadership Awards.
The JML Australia Human Capital Leadership Awards are considered the ‘Oscars’ of the Human Capital industry and seek to find and recognise Australia’s outstanding leadership professionals.
Alec said the achievement as the Human Resources Leader of the Year was the result of a team effort.
"I am extremely proud of my People and Performance (P&P) team and what we have achieved together," he said.
"The P&P team have proactively changed and developed Deloitte’s people capabilities to a level previously not enjoyed by the firm.
"The Deloitte vision is to create a firm that is the most inspiring to work with and our leaders the key to making this happen.
"With a mandate from the CEO to develop leadership capability and a strong performance culture throughout the business, we have established a strategy we have called "L.E.T.S": Leadership, Engagement, Talent and Signals Culture & Values.
"We have managed to influence and change the way we do HR in Deloitte, focusing on partners within the business and working at the strategic rather than transactional end of HR.
"This coupled with the Recruitment of talented HR leaders from the corporate sector instead of professional services lifted our abilities to develop and implement," Alec said.
"Strategies such as the Inspiring Women, Culture Diversity, the unique D-Academy three-year graduate development program, and our learning programs – Excellence Centres, Career Roadmaps, Partner Development Pathways, as well as topical Lunch ‘N’ Learn programs – are all key to the successful running of Deloitte.
"Our new staff referral recruitment program, "Find Like Minds," alone saved the firm over $1.2m in recruitment costs in the last 12 months.
Alec said he was delighted by the award which he said recognised the focus and value Deloitte placed on people and performance.
"The award recognises the commitment Deloitte has made to achieve our goal to be the ‘best’ professional services firm for people management," Alec said.
Chairman and CEO of JML Australia and judging panel member, Jon Leighton said Alec displayed exceptional leadership qualities and has spent the last 15 years leading and building organisations in retail, telecommunications and IT.
"He has developed a talent management and performance culture at Deloitte and inspired women to develop in the workplace environment, which is why the firm recently also won the Federal Government’s Employer of Choice for Women.
"This year we received hundreds of nominations spread across all nine Human Capital categories which were made up of some of Australia’s most talented business leaders.
"The awards have been very well accepted by the business community with this year’s event attracting an even higher calibre of business leaders."
Minister for Health, The Honourable Tony Abbott, MP, was guest of honour at the event. He provided an informative speech on the topic of Australian leadership which was well received by the crowd.
Other category winners included:
- CEO of the Year and Leader of the Year: Michael Hawker, CEO, IAG
- Entrepreneur of the Year: Nic Lyons, CEO, GPT Group
- Director of the Year: Jill Weekes, Chief Executive, Starlight Foundation
- Young Leader of the Year, Michael Malone, Founder, iiNET
- Chief Information Officer of the Year: Fiona Balfour, CIO, Telstra
- Innovator of the Year, Professor Ian Fraser AO, University of Sydney
- Professional Services Leader of the Year: Nicola Wakefield- Evans, Managing Partner, Mallesons
"The winners were put through an exhaustive selection process, whereby all nominees were scrutinised as to whether they possessed three key leadership ingredients – credibility, competence and character," said Mr Leighton.
"All finalists were interviewed and assessed in the areas of demonstrated business results, building organisation capability, building human capital and championing the customer by leading Human Capital consulting organisation, CompAssess."
The judging panel comprised of representatives from the Nominating Council, JML Australia and CompAssess.