The Way We Behave Award - Louise Friend

March 6th, 2025 Liz Smith

At the end of February, we held The Unipart Way CARE Awards - a celebration of the extraordinary individuals who embody our core CARE behaviours.

Over the coming weeks, we'll be sharing the inspiring stories of our award recipients, highlighting their remarkable contributions and dedication.

This week we're spotlighting Louise Friend, Stock Operations Manager at Mercia Park, who received the prestigious, and first ever award for The Way We Behave CARE Award.

The Way We Behave Award

This award is to recognise an individual who exemplifies all of the core CARE behaviours: As Darren Leigh shared on the night, the winner of this award demonstrates these as follows:

Continually Improve and Innovate: "Strive every day to make what they do better, faster, and more efficient, and they take the opportunity to improve their own skills, so they can apply them in their workplace for the benefit of all stakeholders."
Always Deliver Excellence: "Consistently go above and beyond, demonstrating unwavering commitment, accountability, and a relentless pursuit of excellence in everything they do."
Respectful Ways of Working: "Go out of their way to support others and give back to their colleagues and the communities in which they work."
Encouraging and Inclusive: "Make sure that others’ voices are heard, and hold up and celebrate the achievements of their colleagues."

Louise’s Nomination

Louise’s nomination came from her line manager at the time and demonstrated, through specific examples, how she consistently embodies each of these behaviours in her role as Stock Operations Manager at Mercia Park, making her a truly exceptional candidate and worthy winner of this award.

For the award night, Claire Jacquet, Head of Stock and Space, introduced her nomination, alongside a number of Louise’s team, see below video.

Louise's reaction

"I was immensely surprised and grateful to be nominated. I never thought I’d be invited to something like this, but I know none of this would have happened without my amazing team. I still can’t believe I won, and I have received lovely comments, messages, and calls from people right across the whole organisation. People have personally gone out of their way to physically come and congratulate me! I want to say thank you; it’s been the highlight of my career so far. I couldn’t wait to get back to the site to celebrate with my team. On top of all this, my entire family has said how proud they are of me and the achievements my team and I have made. The only downside is my family now getting annoyed at me talking about it all the time!!! Thank you to everyone involved. I am so incredibly grateful."

Louise Friend, Stock Operations Manager at Mercia Park

A huge congratulations to Louise on this well-deserved achievement, and we thank her for her valuable contributions to Mercia Park and the wider organisation.

As Darren concluded on the night, “Imagine a company where all of us were exemplifying the CARE behaviours every single day - what an amazing place it would be to work - and what an amazing job we would be doing to add value for our customers, so that even more customers wanted to come and partner with Unipart!"

Read more about the event here and watch out for more stories of our CARE Award winners over the coming weeks.