UFI - The Global Association of the Exhibition Industry has named Artexis Easyfairs as winner of the 2017 UFI Education Award.

The theme for this year’s UFI Education Award was employee retention. Retaining talented individuals and helping them to continue to develop their skills is an important area of focus for all Human Resource departments.

This year’s award was designed to recognize those companies that have developed an effective HR strategy that aims to recognize talented employees, and encourage them to continue to develop their skills whilst remaining engaged as key members of the team. The potential loss of this kind of talent can prove very negative and costly for an organization.

The UFI Education Award jury applauded the Artexis Easyfairs project, which uses a corporate academy as a key part of the HR strategy to foster and retain talent, develop careers and keep the competence curve as high as possible.

The Academy promotes and nurtures a culture of continuous learning, exposing all team members, regardless of their geographical areas and scope of responsibilities, to the full spectrum of key competency building blocks thanks to responsive learning mediums and latest technologies.

 Other initiatives within this project include a systematic approach to HR management through a fully integrated and transparent HR model and management system to form a comprehensive human capital development cycle: an interconnected environment where people continually expand their capacity to create results and where they are continually learning to learn together.

“The Artexis Easyfairs project was found to be of particular interest as the company clearly defined retention strategies and talent development as a major part of their growth strategy and value as a company,” said Enrica Baccini, Chair of the UFI Human Resources Management (HRM) Committee.

Baccini added, “In addition, clear measurement tools are in place to continually assess the success of the project, and review if and when necessary. This is a great initiative that should be embraced by other companies within our sector of activity. We are a people industry”.

Yasmine Couderc, head of Talent Development at Artexis Easyfairs said: “We receive the 2017 UFI Education Award with great pride and honour. We thank the jury for awarding our project, which reflects our proven capacity to become trendsetters in Talent Development; as well as our determination to create an environment where talented individuals are encouraged to try new things, think differently, grow and develop themselves to reach their fullest potential.”

Couderc added, “As we continue to grow, we strive to remain as engaging, innovative, creative and insightful towards our employees as we are towards the communities we serve, embarking all our team members on a journey into the future where creative entrepreneurship is at the heart of our itinerary.”

The UFI Award winners will share their projects at the 84th UFI Congress in Johannesburg (South Africa) during the Special Interest Group (SIG) for Best Practices. For more details on the UFI Global Congress that will take place from 1 – 4 November please click here.