by Thomas Carey
For our WINCan team, one of the highlights from last year’s project with the Government of Canada’s Future Skills Centre was the opportunity to interact with the two lead Innovation Catalysts at ENWIN Utilities in Windsor (ON):
Barry Leavitt, ENWIN’s Director of Operations and Innovation (the “Innovation” part of the title having been added to reflect the growing importance of inclusive workplace innovation at ENWIN), and
Rosana Kemsley, ENWIN’s Manager of Human Resource Services.
As part of our applied research project on Workplace Innovation and Quality of Work, Barry and Rosana were co-authors of a Case Story – ‘as told to’ our team member Victoria Aboud – about how their corporate journey to enhance the ENWIN innovation program benefited from adaptation of an exemplary research-based practice from Europe. The lens they used to examine the “ENnovation” program was the Fifth Element Model whose development was led by our project partner Dr. Peter Totterdill (co-founder of Workplace Innovation Europe with colleague Rosemary Exton).
This month, Rosana was honoured with a Workplace Culture Innovator of the Year award from Electricity Human Resources Canada, for her contributions to the ENnovation initiative through the work described in the project Case Story. Our congratulations to Rosana!...and to her co-lead Barry. (Barry has retired from ENWIN, which we hope will allow us to involve him more in our further work in the Windsor/Essex area and beyond).
Since this was the inaugural year for the Workplace Culture Innovator award from EHRC – coincidentally, another of our partners on the FSC research project – we can truly say that Rosana’s award in the SME category is “historic”.
Rosana was previously (2020) honoured with a Dream Builder Award for her efforts to promote diversity and inclusion, both within ENWIN and in the community. In addition, she has led cultural and gender awareness partnerships with the Multicultural Council of Windsor and Essex County, the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers, and Women's Enterprise Skills Training of Windsor (WEST). Her mentorship of a female newcomer through WEST was recognised by the organization through a diversity award presented to ENWIN.