“Really very proud indeed”: Abingdon & Witney College finalists in Hays Employer of the Year Award

We are delighted to have made the list of Finalists for the prestigious Hays Employer of the Year Award, part of the Oxfordshire Business Awards (OXBA). OXBA have recognised, rewarded and promoted the achievements of Oxfordshire-based companies for the last 26 years and represent a benchmark for excellence within the county and beyond.

Principal & Chief Executive, Jacqui Canton, said:

“Winning the Employer of the Year Award would mean a huge amount to all the staff members at the college. Unless you’ve been through the last two or three years with the pandemic in a teaching environment it’s really hard to explain what it’s been like for the whole staff team really. Everyone has had to learn how to redo their jobs right back from the beginning so it’s been a huge achievement for everybody. Being an Employer Of Choice is a strategic objective for our college; it’s really important that to us that our staff team feel valued and are able to contribute positively to helping all our students succeed and winning this award at the end of such a difficult time would be a huge achievement for absolutely everybody and we would be really very proud indeed.”

The other two finalists in this category are Abingdon-based Gigaclear, which is committed to bringing superfast broadband to rural communities, and Hedges Law, established in 1789 and who took the progressive step of becoming employee-owned in 2021.

In total, 14 awards will be presented at a dinner to be held at the John Henry Brookes Building at Brookes University on Friday 17 June, the first such awards dinner to be held since the beginning of the pandemic. In 2022, OXBA recognises the achievements of the 2019 winner of the Charity & Community Award, One-Eighty, which is OXBA’s chosen charity of the year and which supports and engages young people to live motivated and successful lives. We are extremely proud to be in the company of such innovative organisations which share our values of community engagement and connectivity and wish all of the finalists well in their endeavours to help everyone in Oxfordshire reach their full potential over the coming year.

You can view a video produced for the event on the OXBA YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvcGfm4pXO0