Nigel Howell CEO Firstport puts great store by the number of WOW! awards Firstport staff have been honoured with. He does rather try to offset the number of awards against the number of complaints.
Rightly he praises the "hard work" of the staff.
After all, their job adverts indicate 35 hour working weeks.
The reality is often pay for 35 hour weeks but more often than not 60-70 hour working weeks are the norm.
Of course it is great for anyone to receive an award.
There are very many hard working dedicated people within Firstport who are no part of the corrupt practices adopted by senior management.
So very many do deserve a WOW! award
However all is not what it may seem?
Clearly it can be the case that a property/development manager/porter or someone in customer service may do something very well and it well merited for a resident to nominate them for a Wow! award.
That said,by no means all are nominated for an award by residents.
Firstport can self nominate to bring the numbers up.
As good as they may be in their job, what resident is going to nominate the following for example?
Mark Oxborrow Financial Analyst
Giselle Smith Learning + Development Business Partner
Mabsy Khan Junior infrastructure Engineer
Ian Smith Application Support Engineer Analyst
Sahd Malik Help Desk Technician
Samantha Withey Purchase Ledger Clerk
For how much longer the Wow! awards will continue is a matter of speculation?
The company behind the awards is based in Stevenage and their last accounts recorded that "2018 was a more challenging year than expected"
They made a profit of £2,037.
They show assets of £66,140.
Unfortunately, they appear to have racked up debts amounting to £484,470, giving them a negative net worth of £-418,330.
Should anyone be attending their as yet not announced awards dinner in 2019, it might be an idea to bring sandwiches?
