Tony Shivers, Managing Director, Premier Electrics, receives the Best Place to Work Medium Business Award from Baker Tilly Mooney Moore's Consulting Partner Donal Laverty
Following our 2025 sponsorship of the Best Place to Work award, we are proud to sponsor the Overall Business of the Year at this year’s Business Excellence Awards. Ahead of this year’s awards, we caught up with the 2025 winners of the Medium Business category, Premier Electrics.
An electrical contracting company based in Bellaghy, County Derry, Premier Electrics has been delivering projects throughout Ireland, the UK, and Europe since 1993. We spoke to Gary Alexander of Premier Electrics, to find out how they became Northern Ireland’s best medium sized business to work in.
What did it mean for Premier Electrics to win the Best Place to Work – Medium Business award in last year’s Irish News Business Excellence Awards?
For us, it was a great recognition of what we are doing as a business to ensure that we attract and retain our staff and offer a culture and environment that helps them develop and advance their careers moving forward.
What do you think set Premier Electrics apart to win the award?
In one sense, we know what we do and we think we do it well, but we are always open to hearing new ideas.
Our clients are critical to us, and we recognise the importance of our service delivery which is through the day-to-day interactions of our people. We work hard to retain our people, and we are proud that approximately 45% of our people have been with us for more than 10 years.
As a business we are embedded in our local community. Within our community we recognise the value of sport, and we are delighted to sponsor a number of local sports teams as well as running our annual Charity of the Year Programme.
I believe we come across as being genuine and authentic with a real focus on driving a continual people culture across the business.
I would like to think that our award submission showed the genuine effort we put into ensuring our people are central to our business.
Were there any specific initiatives or policies that had the biggest impact on employee satisfaction?
We deliver social activities throughout the year such as Employee Appreciation Day, Easter gifts for staff and a family fun day at the end of August. In addition, we organise annual health checks for our staff.
Because we have people in the office and on-site working across multiple countries, we are very focused on how we keep communication flowing to ensure we create a strong sense of community. One of the initiatives we launched was a mobile communications platform, which is updated daily with project updates, people news, news articles that are of interest along with guidance, and support around health and wellbeing.
We are constantly looking to improve how we communicate and involve our people.
In our office we have daily walking, running, and gym sessions. Taking place each lunchtime, this allows our people time to connect and chat away from their desks as well as support their physical and mental wellbeing.
What challenges were there in building a ‘best place to work’ and how did you overcome them?
One of the challenges we face is our business model, because at any one time we have people working in multiple countries so there is a natural challenge in driving connectivity.
To help improve connectivity we host regular update meetings, daily communications, and workshops to provide updates and share ideas.
How has winning the award influenced your future plans for your team and workplace environment?
Businesses can often work in isolation and become focused on day-to-day operations, but we are always keen to benchmark ourselves and explore new ideas. It was therefore great to be involved in these awards and learn what businesses in other industry sectors are doing.
To be shortlisted alongside so many other fantastic companies was amazing and very humbling. To win was great, and it gives us the confidence to kick on.
For us it is about listening to our people and striving every day to be better. Entering the awards has given us the belief that we have the building blocks in place for future growth.