An Assistant Human Resources Manager at Herefordshire firm allpay, has been shortlisted for a prestigious national award.

The CIPD People Management Awards attract hundreds of entries from around the country, and this year introduced a new award – the Michael Kelly Outstanding Student of the Year, for which Jessica Stone has become one of just four finalists.

Jess has recently completed the CIPD’s three year Professional Development Scheme which assisted her theoretical, research and report writing skills. It has enabled her to design a comprehensive Job Evaluation Scheme for allpay which is now well under way.

“From completing my CIPD qualification in 2009, my Director set me an extremely challenging, but rewarding objective; to design and implement Job Evaluation for allpay. My background and knowledge before starting the project on Job Evaluation was limited. It was necessary to decide on the type of scheme which would represent the business objectives, would be forward looking, easily adaptable and would represent the professional, technical and specialist roles,” said Jess.

She continued “Knowing that this project is such a specialist area of HR, it inspired me to enter the new CIPD award. You can imagine how elated and excited I was when they confirmed that I was a finalist for the award – wow, what fantastic news! I am thankful that I work for such a great company which has supported me through all my learning and development”.

She was encouraged to develop the allpay scheme, which will provide visibility to all staff on job roles and pay scales, by HR Manager Pam Wooden and HR Director Justine Norman, both of whom also supported her award application.

Justine comments “Jess certainly rose to the challenge of designing a job evaluation scheme for allpay. This is an extremely complex and specialist area of HR, generally, and in many circumstances a company would employ a specialist organization who would charge tens of thousands in fees to provide us with a scheme. What we have is a bespoke scheme designed especially for allpay. Jess has done a fantastic job and deserves to win this award!”

The rigorous selection process culminates with a judging day at the beginning of September and the winner will be announced at a gala awards ceremony on November 10th in Manchester.