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Olympic Athletes Join Fusion Colleagues For Awards Scheme Closing Ceremony

Immediate release: 29 January 2009

Hard-working employees at Fusion Contact Centre Services hosted an Olympic-themed 'buzz day' on January 29 to mark the closing of their Going for the Gold awards scheme in which they stand to win a share of £22,000 in holiday vouchers. Each site was visited by the Olympic athletes who were supported by Fusion at the outset of the awards scheme last year.

Fusion is the call centre division of the BGL Group, a major player in UK home and motor insurance. As part of the awards scheme launch in March 2008, Fusion enlisted the support of British Record Holders from the local area who were competing in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. In exchange, Fusion made donations to each athlete's training budget.

The awards scheme was designed to recognise Fusion's top performers as well as those achieving their personal best – reflecting the focus for aspiring athletes.

During the course of the year employees were measured in a range of categories including top performance; most improved performance; best newcomer and team of the month and were awarded gold medals for reaching their personal best.

Each of the athletes tucked into some of the Olympic-themed goodies and take part in a whole host of Patriotic-themed activities and competitions including judging team slogans to show how united employees are as a team; an Olympic quiz and "it's a knockout" challenges on video games consoles.

They also talked to advisors, signed autographs and picked out three names of Gold Medal winners at random at each site. These three people will get an invitation to a VIP Day at BGL Group Head Office in Peterborough on Thursday, February 12, where they will join 17 other top performing advisors from the awards scheme with a chance to win a share of £22,000 in holiday vouchers.

David Thompson, Managing Director for Fusion, said: "The Olympic-themed Awards were designed to not only reward and recognise the top advisors and team leaders in our business but also those who consistently reach their personal best. Fusion is highly committed to supporting its local communities and offering opportunities to young people, so when we were offered the opportunity to back a 'home-grown' athlete at each of our UK Fusion sites, we knew it was too good an opportunity to miss. The scheme has been a great success and a great opportunity to put something back into the local community."

Colleagues at Bretton, Peterborough, supported British-born Javelin Thrower Goldie Sayers who broke the British junior record for throwing the javelin in 2001. She became British team captain in 2007 after being the youngest female athlete to compete in an individual event at the Athens Olympics, and went on to set a new Personal Best and British Record with a throw of 65.74m in Beijing.

Colleagues at Coventry backed Marlon Devonish, the British Number one in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay. He is one of the most successful British athletes of all time having won medals at the Olympics, World Championships, European Championships and Commonwealth Games, the highlight being a sensational Olympic Gold medal in Athens 2004. Marlon made it to the semi-finals of the 200m at Beijing.

Colleagues at Sunderland were cheering on their local athlete Chris Cook, Commonwealth Gold Medalist Breaststroke Swimmer who secured his place in the Olympics by winning the 100m breast stroke race at the GB National Championships last April, setting a new British and Commonwealth record in the process. At the Olympics in Beijing he made the semi-finals for the 100m breaststroke and finished sixth in the men’s 4 x 100m medley relay final.

And finally, colleagues at Peterlee backed Long Jumper Chris Tomlinson who had a major breakthrough in 2002 when, just three months after breaking both wrists in a weight-training accident, he jumped 8.27m to break the British record that had been held by Lynn Davies for 34 years. He broke his own record by a further 2cm in Germany in 2007, set a new record of 8.18m in February 2008, before going on to win the silver medal at the 2008 World Indoor Championships. Despite carrying an injury Chris made it to Beijing where he jumped 7.70 and just missed out on a place in the final.