Our 2018 Heart of Gold Award Winner
The RBF recently went on the hunt for a worthy candidate for our Heart of Gold Award. As we all know, there are many wonderful industry awards throughout the year and these work well in recognising organisations, projects and individual efforts for various sections of the industry.
However, we felt like there was still something missing – a celebration of those that have a genuine heart of gold, those that put everyone else first, go the extra mile, are selfless and are always first to help out.
Therefore, to make this award happen the team at RBF decided to come up with a unique way of casting nominations and then voting- all using social media! Nominations were open to anyone in the industry and these then had to be shortlisted to five finalists, which were chosen by the RBF’s Services team. Once the finalists were decided, each one was posted out onto the RBF Facebook and Twitter for votes to be placed! Votes were counted by any ‘like’ placed on the individuals post.
Once the winner was identified, this then left the actual award ceremony. No black tie or table booking required – the RBF team went live on Facebook and Twitter! This meant that everyone could log in, with a cuppa and watch everything live from the comfort of their office or home!
The RBF team were honoured to be joined remotely by Chris Burchell, Managing Director, Arriva UK Trains. Who assisted the hosting of the award alongside the RBF’s Fundraising Manager, Faye Jaques. Chris was keen to add his own touch to the award ceremony and added his personal congratulations to the winner – someone he would often meet himself from time to time!
We are delighted to say that Linda Smith of Rail Delivery Group was voted for, and won our RBF Heart of Gold – by a landslide! In Linda’s initial nomination it stated; “Linda is a ray of sunshine. She is the heart of the business and has an open door to everyone should they have problems or issues she is always at hand to listen or give advice. Anyone that arrives at reception for an interview she does her level best to calm them down and there has been so many grateful candidates. The business runs on rail but it could not run so well without superb individuals like Linda!”
Faye Jaques and Emma Cooper of RBF went along to Rail Delivery Group HQ and handed Linda Heart of Gold Award to her personally. A lot of the RDG staff and Paul Plummer also joined them and it was fantastic to see so many come out and show their support for Linda. On receiving the award, Linda wanted to say; “Thank you to everybody who voted for me, I am so grateful and I love my job here!”
