Jessica Rabut, HR Director at Lombard Odier;

On Tuesday 1 February 2022, the 19th Luxembourg HR Awards Ceremony and HR One Gala Dinner took place at the European Convention Centre Luxembourg (ECCL) in Luxembourg-Kirchberg.

The evening event followed the Human Capital Europe (HCE) conference held earlier in the day, held in-person attracting 400 people, and comprising morning sessions on "From ordinary people to extraordinary leaders" and afternoon sessions within the "HR Year" conference, all under the event legend "The place where human capital, business & technology align". Separately, a side event was also held, an IoT event organised by POST entitled "Let's make flexibility your news super power?", a hybrid event which was held both in-person and online.

The conference, gala dinner and awards ceremony were held in-person, as opposed to the online versions of this event for the past two years. The prestigious awards recognise the best local practices and most innovative projects in Luxembourg over the past twelve months.

Charlotte BOUTELLIER, Co-CEO of Farvest Group (organiser of HR One), officially opened the awards ceremony which was attended by around 200 people. She said that is was great for professionals to connect together again in a physical environment. The other Farvest Co-CEO, Margaux VETZEL, shared the stage and talked about finding exceptional HR practices over the past year.

Lisa BURKE hosted the event and stated how she was delighted to see many people without masks in an intimate setting, stressing that the event was following CovidCheck guidelines (and would be finished by 23:00). She recalled the conference and talks earlier in the day, including meeting one another and collaborating for the future. She then reviewed the selection process which was based on online applications, the jury selecting three in each of the seven project categories identified for this year (each year the categories can differ, according to the market, etc.) and then those three finalists pitching their projects earlier in the today. Lisa referred to the pandemic and acknowledged that those working in HR have had a significant increase in their workload during the past 22 months.

The 2021 Winners were announced and the awards presented between courses of the Gala Dinner (smoked salmon, guinea fowl, chocolate pecan cake), with music provided by the Naomi Jazz Trio. The award winners were as follows:

- Supermiro won the HR Digital Partner of the Year award, with educos and skeeled the other finalists.

- MLC Advisory won the Learning & Development Initiative of the Year award.

- Myskillcamp won the European Rising HR Tech of the Year award, with Salonkee and Zortify the other finalists.

- Devoteam won the Onboarding Excellence Initiative of the Year award (sponsored by Cubiks PSI), with CFL and Klarna the other finalists.

- CFL won the CSR Initiative of the Year award (sponsored by INDR), with CGI and POST the other finalists.

- Wilfried LAGRANGE, CEO at Devoteam, won the Human Focussed CEO of the Year award, with Marc WENGLER, CEO at CFL, and Francois REMOGNA, Country Managing Director at DHL Express, the other finalists.

- Jessica RABUT, HR Director at Lombard Odier Group was named HR Manager of the Year.