Media Release: October 2006
New Zealand Business Excellence Award winners for 2006 announced
Mike Watson, Chief Executive of the New Zealand Business Excellence Foundation (NZBEF), is pleased to announce the 2006
winners of the New Zealand Business Excellence Awards.
Mike Watson said, “This year we have some tremendous results, with the Royal New Zealand Navy achieving a silver level
award with the highest score recorded in New Zealand since 1995. Additionally Hutt City Council became only the second
New Zealand local government authority to achieve a silver level award with manufacturing company Metso Minerals,
National contracting company City Care and executive recruitment firm Kerridge & Partners all receiving bronze level Awards.”
Full list of results:
Royal New Zealand Navy – Silver Award
Hutt City Council – Silver Award
Metso Minerals - Bronze Award
City Care - Bronze Award
Kerridge & Partners – Bronze Award
“Many organisations aspire to be world class, but do not have a sense of what this means. The US Baldrige criteria, upon
which the NZ Business Excellence Awards are based, is an internationally recognised and respected business model based
on the common elements found in high performing organisations around the globe. The model is updated annually and unlike
other “total quality management” models it is not a compliance framework, but rather a means of guiding continuous
improvement and improving organisational performance” said Watson.
Watson added, “While not perhaps as well known in the business world as they should be, the National Business Excellence
Awards are the most prestigious in NZ because they are fully aligned to the US Baldrige framework which is the only
internationally calibrated, organisation wide business excellence framework available anywhere in the world. A New
Zealand company who excels in these awards can genuinely compare themselves with world best practice.”
Watson went on, “Benchmarking yourself against the best in the world is an important step for New Zealand businesses. In
our view, not enough NZ organisations embrace the pursuit of excellence as an integral part of their Board and
Management agenda. While the desire is there, the demands of day-to-day business operations mean that the necessary time
to measure performance against International benchmarks is not available. To be excellent in global terms you have to
make time.”
“One of the pleasing things about this years Award winners is that they have all made that commitment to performance
excellence, and are all reaping the rewards”, Watson concluded.
The Royal New Zealand Navy
The award this year of the New Zealand Business Excellence Awards - Silver Award to the RNZN indicates that the Navy is
making progress towards its Vision to be the best small-nation Navy in the world (kia mau mana motuhake e te taua moana
o te ao).
“This Vision provides a headmark and is an important guide for the future course for the Navy”, said Chief of Navy Rear
Admiral David Ledson. “It clearly identifies that our aspirations will be achieved in a ‘Navy’ context and not in just
an ‘organisational one”’ he said. He added that “while there are many similarities between us and other organisations,
there are also important differences and we can’t afford to lose sight of these.”
A team of evaluators, from the New Zealand Business Excellence Foundation, spent three days speaking to a cross section
of Navy personnel and viewing the Navy at work. As a result of their assessment, the Navy was scored at 603 points out
of a possible 1000. To put this into context, a score of 700 or more would recognise the RNZN as a “World Class”
operation, a status that is Internationally recognised and respected. In two previous assessments in 2001 and 2003 the
Navy achieved 365 and 440 points respectively.
Hutt City Council
Hutt City Council Chief Executive Rik Hart says he and his staff are delighted to achieve their new ranking, “It is
really a very significant achievement for us. We did not submit for the Awards last year so we could do the hard work
necessary to raise the standard of our operation from Bronze to potential Silver. “We now have the work ahead of us to
get to the top Gold Level, (700 points or more ). Clearly that will be very hard, but I believe we have the people here
in HCC to achieve the very highest, right up there as a world class organisation.”
Hart added, “We don’t just present a rule book and ask staff to live up to it. A huge part of making progress in the
Business Excellence Awards is staff suggesting and implementing the improvements themselves. We put high store on that
and it becomes very competitive,” he says.
Metso Minerals
“This is excellent news and reflects well on everyone in the company,” said Keith Cooke, Metso Minerals Business
Manager. “It is comforting to know we have made much progress since our last application. By going through the process
of submitting a New Zealand Business Excellence Award application in 2001, we very quickly saw the value of this
framework in tying together previously separate activities and initiatives,”
City Care
Denise Bowen, City Care’s Business Processes Manager, says, “We adopted the Performance Excellence Model for its
holistic approach to business success. The structure provides us with a clear path to follow, so we can see how we are
progressing in those business areas that are harder to measure yet are fundamentally important to our success. We can
have the best systems in the world, but in order to be successful we need to be getting the business results as well.”
Kerridge & Partners
Peter Kerridge, Director of Kerridge & Partners says that he is delighted with the NZBEF Award as the executive search business has always adhered to a
philosophy of leadership, excellence and best practice, “Our business has put a lot of investment into developing
various strategies for performance excellence as a benchmark for achieving international standards for its clients.
Perhaps most significantly, surveys show that 100 percent of our customers say they would use us again and also refer us
to others, an achievement the team are truly proud of.”
-ENDS-