Ami Williams, senior operations manager at Synergy Vision, explains why Eileen Gallagher should win the Leader of the Year category of the Guardian Small Business Showcase competition:
I, and the rest of the team here at Synergy Vision, would like to nominate one of our executive directors. Eileen has been instrumental in creating the fantastically open, fun, transparent and honest culture we have. She goes beyond the norm to empower and inspire every single team member whether in their professional development or supporting personal challenges we all experience.
Her inclusive and bubbly nature have just made the business such a pleasure to work in every day. She cares about people individually and makes a real difference to their motivation and aspirations. She has introduced the most inclusive flexible working policy (100% of us take advantage of this), which is available to everyone from day one. It’s subsequently a business that has possible the best work-life balance (an example of this is the growth in part time workers to 33%).
From challenging the status quo continually and removing any ‘tick box’ processes to make everyone’s time more effective, she has become someone that people aspire to be like and look to for help, support and honesty.
Eileen’s leadership style and integrity make her an incredibly strong example of how leadership within SME’s and beyond should be. We could all learn a lot from her and sometimes she doesn’t even realise it. She embeds core values in to the whole business and we are growing in part due to her efforts in creating a valued, engaged and motivated team with a 97% staff retention rate.
All entries which meet the competition criteria are published and our judging panel select a shortlist of the top three for each category. Winners are announced at an awards ceremony in summer 2016.
