Susan Allan from South Moor, Stanley, is celebrating after her design was chosen as the winner in a recent competition set by her employer, SONE Products Ltd (SONE).
Taking employee engagement seriously and using it as a fundamental ingredient to develop a robust five year strategy, chairman and CEO of SONE, Raymond Oliver, decided to launch an in-house competition asking the workforce to come up with a memorable way of demonstrating the company’s five core values - respect, responsibility, innovation, customer focus and profitability.
Shift operator Susan’s winning design, of a deeply rooted, bountiful fruit tree with the five values incorporated, beat off stiff competition from a number of her colleagues. Speaking about winning, she said:
“The inspiration for my design came from the idea that we are a growing family tree and it represents SONE branching out into new opportunities. I am surprised I won but pleased to be included when the directors are thinking about the company’s future.”
Raymond Oliver added: “It is hugely important for both the motivation and welfare of staff, as well as the ongoing success of SONE, to work with our employees and get them on board when arriving at a set of values which reflect the kind of company we are.
“We had some extremely strong entries to the competition, however Susan’s design stood out as she had clearly given it a lot of thought, coming up with the family tree idea.”
Susan’s design has now been developed by SONE’s in-house creative team for use on posters, as a screen saver and on the company’s website. She was presented with her prize of a framed copy of the design signed by the chairman and £50 of shopping vouchers at a recent presentation held at SONE’s production facility in Stanley.
