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Top Employer Awards 2011

The Awards recognise employers who are progressive in their flexible working practices and proactive in seeking to assist working parents combine successful careers with being a parent. They were presented at a ceremony on 5th October, and this year there were three new categories – Talent Attraction, Childcare and Working Mums Champion - reflecting developments in work life balance policy.

Award Winners

Overall Top Employer Award - John Lewis Partnership
This award represented the organisation deemed to have outstanding policies on work life balance, diversity and flexible working. For this award, the judges rated all the winners out of 10 on the different criteria from the other awards – diversity for all, especially for working parents and at all levels; flexible working; career development; and work life balance. John Lewis was the organisation which stood out in terms of the comprehensive and embedded nature of what it offered on work life balance.  Click here to find out more.

Innovation in Flexible Working Award - Accenture
The judges felt Accenture was doing something on every front and that everything about its flexible work culture was open and transparent. For this company, flexible working was the norm.  Click here to find out more.

Employee Engagement Award - Prudential
The judges felt the winner had enthusiastically embraced employee engagement and made huge and innovative progress.  Click here to find out more.

Talent Attraction Award - Virtual Sales Team
The judges felt the winner demonstrated clearly and openly in job adverts that flexibility was part of their business model and it was clear their approach had boosted retention.

Childcare Award - John Lewis Partnership
The judges felt the winner of this award had a comprehensive and broad-based range of policies and practices which addressed a wide range of childcare issues. Click here to find out more.

SME Award (1-25 employees) - Hireserve
The judges praised the winner for demonstrating clearly the business case for using flexible working. Flexible practices were clearly communicated, including at interview stage and part timers were considered real employees with a career ahead of them.

SME Award (26-250 employees) - Duo
The judges praised the winner's array of impressive policies aimed at supporting working parents. They recognised the skills parents brought to the workplace, were supportive if staff had sick children and showed flexibility across a broad variety of roles.

Working Mums Champion Award - Mia Drennan, Square Mile Connections
The judges felt the winner showed energy and commitment in driving forward innovative policies and clearly demonstrated that they were having an impact outside their own company in the promotion of flexible working.

To find out more about the awards, and for a full list of shortlised organisations click here.

Download the Awards brochure

Keynote Speaker - Alison Maitland

Alison Maitland is a business author, journalist and speaker who specialises in leadership, gender, and the changing world of work. A former Financial Times journalist, she is co-author of Future Work, published in October 2011, and of the bestseller Why Women Mean Business. She regularly writes articles and columns for the Financial Times, The Conference Board Review and other media. Alison directs The Conference Board's Council for Diversity in Business and is a Senior Visiting Fellow in the Faculty of Management at Cass Business School, London. She speaks and moderates at many public conferences and internal corporate events. Based in the UK, her recent speaking engagements have taken her all over Europe and to North America. She has been widely interviewed by national and international media on gender and work. www.alisonmaitland.com

Guest Panellist - Fiona O'Hara, Human Capital & Diversity Lead, Accenture

Fiona joined Accenture in 1995 and leads the Human Capital & Diversity (HCD) priorities and sponsors the HCD team in their continued success driving first class programmes across the UK and Ireland. As the UKI Human Capital & Diversity senior executive, Fiona is responsible for driving the human capital strategy and agenda across UKI and working with the leadership team to achieve our diversity and inclusion goals. She also leads corporate citizenship activities, working with the people advocates to focus on employee engagement where possible—using the HCD programmes as a way to extend Accenture's footprint with their clients. Fiona is also the Corporate Citizenship Council member for the UKI.

Meet the Judges

Gillian Nissim, Founder of Workingmums.co.uk
Andy Lake, Editor of Flexibility.co.uk
Jennifer Liston-Smith, Head of Coaching Development at My Family Care,
David Dunbar, Head of BT Flexible Working Services
Dr Caroline Gatrell, Lecturer in Management Learning and Leadership in the Management School at Lancaster University.

If you require more information on the Workingmums.co.uk Top Employer Awards please contact Sally Bradley at awards@workingmums.co.uk or call 020 8432 6094.

2011 Sponsors