Congratulations to the Australian winners of our highest accolade, the Certis Pinnacle Awards! Each year, these honours recognise the best of the best within Certis, from our frontliners to our corporate colleagues.
Certis Group CEO Paul Chong presented our Financial Year 2022 winners and finalists with their certificates and trophies during a ceremony in our Sydney head office, while employees from around Australia joined in virtually.
In his address, he praised them for being inspirations to us all with their professionalism, courage and dedication to serving the needs of our customers.
Paul also spoke about the Certis Service Delivery System: a rigorous training program that enables each and every officer to deliver extraordinary results. At Certis, every employee is encouraged to be the best they can be, and the Pinnacle Awards are motivation, and recognition of these efforts.
See the full list of winners below:
Excellence in Customer Service – Individual
Winner: Security Officer Leonie Bevan
Finalists: Security Supervisor Andrew Simon, Security Supervisor Deanna Symonds
Leonie always prioritises the needs of customers and clients during each shift she works. When dealing with people she is always professional, respectful and caring while ensuring their safety.
As a Security Officer, Leonie has often assisted members of the public experiencing personal issues by obtaining support for them and seeking help from support groups or emergency services.
Leonie also offers her assistance to law enforcement by helping to locate missing persons, and she has no reservations about going above and beyond her scope of work to do so. Her standout qualities include a knack for keeping people calm in stressful situations, and knowing when a situation needs to be escalated to the police.
Leonie exemplifies our core values of customer focus, care and professionalism.
Excellence in Customer Service – Team
Winners: Security Officers Michael Dallow, Trevor Morris and Deanna Symonds, and Security Supervisors Daniel Mykytyschyn and Shannon Roda
This South Australia-based team responded to multiple criminal and emergency incidents over the last year, using their training and teamwork to defuse all situations.
In one instance, the team responded to a shoplifting incident at a major retailer where the culprit had turned violent. Security Officer Daniel Mykytyschyn remained calm, despite the threat of direct physical harm, as he assessed the situation and bided his time for the right opportunity to safely disarm the individual and contain the situation until the police arrived.
In a separate incident, the security team had received an alert from the police regarding an armed offender in the car park who was attempting to threaten a vehicle with a gun. The team reviewed the CCTV footage and tracked the offender, advising the police of the offender’s whereabouts. This enabled police to quickly locate and arrest the offender.
The team displayed great courage in defusing the situation with an aggressive person and excellent teamwork in tracking down an armed offender.
Take Charge & Go the Extra Mile
Joint Winners: Operational Support Officer Sharon Fletcher and Security Officer Sean Lampard
Over the last year, Sharon has used her tenacity and professionalism to handle challenging situations for clients. Her attention to detail, passion and commitment to her work was evident in her ability to quickly identify gaps and implement processes to ensure customer satisfaction, increasing compliance levels by a staggering 50% in less than a year.
Sharon is often called upon to respond to incidents, enquiries and issues outside of her core hours. Her dedication to delivering timely results for the company and its clients sees her pull shifts on weekends and public holidays because she could never stand to leave a concern unaddressed.
In early 2022, the NSW university campus where Sean Lampard was stationed became an emergency evacuation point for the surrounding regions during a devastating flood season. Sean worked long hours at the evacuation centre to ensure that there always was a sufficient security presence on site. He was also instrumental in maintaining the high morale within the team and providing evacuees with support for their mental and physical wellbeing.
When not on shift, Sean also volunteered to assist the flood-affected community in any way he could, from assisting with demolition work to cleaning up the debris from receding flood waters in the local area.
For their respective efforts, Sharon and Sean were jointly awarded this honour.
Excellence in Business Support – Individual
Winner: Applications Developer Janie Franzinelli
Finalists: National Procurement Manager Allan Lee, National Projects & Administration Manager Tanya Honess, Site Supervisor Mark Howson
An often unsung hero, Janie is the ultimate quiet achiever who consistently goes above and beyond expectations to deliver incredible results. Working in the IT department, Janie assisted her colleagues and clients by responding to over 10,000 IT support requests in the last financial year, an average of almost 900 tickets per month. From drafting critical reports to creating APIs and syncing systems, no task was too large or too challenging for Janie to handle.
Janie was instrumental in delivering multiple crucial business projects, including managing staff portals in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, ensuring validation of security licenses and even creating a new payment claims system for customers.
Excellence in Business Support – Team
Winner: National Manager for HR Greg Shaw and Manager & HR Business Partner Sindhu Sarachandran
In a difficult labour market, the recruitment efforts of Greg and Sindhu cannot go unnoticed. When a major new client needed assistance, the pair travelled from Sydney to Brisbane at short notice to support them, successfully recruiting and onboarding more than 20 new employees for the site.
The pair also redeployed dozens of employees across multiple sites, ensuring that each and every officer had secure employment and support. They successfully conducted a management training program for all Client Services Managers and Supervisors, receiving excellent feedback on the sessions, and created a quarterly newsletter for the Protective Services division to better engage their employees.
Greg and Sindhu consistently go above and beyond the call of duty and are always looking for new ways to engage our valued employees.
Well done, Team Certis!