Nottingham Business School alumnus shortlisted for coveted award
Nottingham Business School alumnus Riwilo Masulani has been shortlisted for a CIM Chartered Manager of the Year Award. Presented annually, the award celebrates the outstanding achievements and contributions a manager has made to both their employer and own development.
Riwilo completed a Master of Business Administration degree with Nottingham Business School in 2019. Currently employed as a permitting team leader in the Environment Agency’s National Permitting Service (NPS), his role involves supporting and leading a team that facilitates UK businesses and landholders to use water resources more sustainably.
An experienced in environmental management, Riwilo has worked on various international sustainability projects, in locations such as Zimbabwe, Southern Africa and the UK.
Recently becoming a CIM chartered manager, Riwilo completed the MBA as part of his executive leadership development. He received the Dean’s Award of Academic Excellence in recognition of his innovative research on how differing leadership styles at the Environment Agency impacted on staff motivation.
“Being a previous recipient of Nottingham Business School Dean Scholarship Award funded my MBA studies,” Riwilo says, “so I owe a lot of my success to NBS and have always wanted to say thank you.
“Many of the shortlisted candidates are fellows of the Institute who have been in management roles for over ten years,” he adds, “so finding out I had been shortlisted within just three years of graduating was a real honour and a big testament to the School and everything I learnt and achieved there.”
The award celebrates the high achievers of management and leadership, recognising outstanding achievement and contribution in terms of an individual’s professional development. It also recognises their high levels of progression and ability have a positive impact on their employer.
Riwilo’s business research project at NBS focused on the use of corporate scorecard measures to increase diversity of workforce at workplaces.
“When I became a team leader,” he says, “I had an opportunity of implementing some of the recommendations from my findings to attract diverse talent. It’s the application of the transformational and inclusive leadership skills learned at NBS I’ve used to drive these changes that has earned me a place on the shortlist.”
Talking about the practical measures he’d used to drive increased diversity in the workplace, Riwilo reveals these were varied.
“We looked at whether things like competency-based interview questions were inadvertently restricting the sorts of candidates from being shortlisted,” he says, ”or whether we were using the correct channels to recruit from.
“By making organisational cultural changes, we’ve been able to attract diverse talent and help the Environment Agency serve its diverse customers.”
The winner of the CIM award will be announced in November 2022.