Hannah Jardine awarded annual EPIC Award

March 14, 2023 Lindie Kramers

Congratulations to Hannah Jardine for winning the 2022 EPIC award.

Every quarter at Istoria Group, we give out an award to the team member – or members - who have best embodied our EPIC brand values. EPIC stands for:

Entrepreneurial Spirit

Personable Approach

Intelligent Thinking

Collaborative Working

Anyone in the Group can put someone forward, on the basis of exemplifying one or two or three of these values – or even all four!

The winning person or people may have proved outstanding or produced incredible work on behalf of parent company Istoria Group - or one of its three sister creative companies: Ignition, Phoenix Wharf and Tiny Spark. In some cases, for more than one company.

This year, for the first time ever, the same person has excelled and been given the annual award not only for a second time, but for the second year in a row!

Hannah Jardine has shared what it means to win an EPIC award below.

Q&A with Hannah Jardine, Sustainability and Development Director

How did it feel to be named winner of the EPIC Award a second time?

It’s a real honour to win once, let alone twice! I’m exceptionally delighted! What a privilege.

WHAT MOTIVATES YOU TO SEEK CONTINUOUSLY TO GO BEYOND EXPECTATIONS IN YOUR ROLE?

I thrive on success and accomplishment and that really pushes me to go beyond in all I do. I’m proud to work for Istoria Group and proud of what it stands for and am therefore highly motivated to help the company succeed, by doing what I can.

WHAT HAVE YOUR HIGHLIGHTS OF THE PAST YEAR BEEN IN YOUR WORK FOR ISTORIA GROUP AND IGNITION?

The biggest achievement has got to be becoming a Certified B Corp. That’s been the dream, and here we are, certified! I was super proud of that, as I was heavily involved in the process.

I also had some great New Business wins, and being reasonably new to Business Development, that was a real highlight for me.

The continuation of achieving our standards, ISO 20121, ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 and Cyber Essentials, are always a high point in the year for me. I look after these standards. We’ve held these for many years, and we constantly push ourselves with our objectives to achieve more and more, year on year. Our external auditors were so impressed with our level of process and control and said they’d never seen anything so detailed, which is something to be proud of!

WHICH EPIC VALUE OR VALUES HAVE COUNTED MOST FOR YOU OVER THE PAST YEAR?

They are all equally important to success, but I think this year ‘Personal Approach’ has counted the most for me. The company has made huge progress in the wake of Covid, getting back to (and going beyond) where we were in 2019. Building relationships and being proactive in our ways of working with clients, old and new, has been paramount to this success.

‘Collaborative Working’ has also been key. There’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’ as they say, and we’ve got a great team at Istoria Group who all work together to achieve our company focused goals.

Congratulations Hannah!

Our business was founded (back in 2007) on the principle of balancing people and planet with profit, whilst delivering great creative work for our clients. Becoming a B Corp aligned completely with our purpose and publicly demonstrates we are a business which puts as much emphasis on our social and environmental impact, as we do on our bottom line. Certification involves assessment of a company’s impact on its governance, workers, customers, community, and environment. It is a lengthy process. The average score is 50, and organisations then work towards achieving a score of 80, the minimum required for certification. Istoria Group scored 97. Achieving Certified B Corp status was one of the proudest moments in our Group’s history and Hannah played an integral part in helping us achieve this.