Best Practice Awards

The 2025 Best Practice Awards are now CLOSED. 

Does your workplace have a stand-out culture, progressive policies, or practices that go the extra mile to support parents and carers? 

Now in their sixteenth year, the Best Practice Awards showcase and celebrate employers who are offering flexibility for all their people and going above and beyond in their support for parents and carers.

The finalists will be announced in May, and the winners will be announced in June 2025.

The 2025 categories

Best for Mothers (sponsored by Umbrella HR)

This award is about mothers at all stages of their children’s lives. We are interested in mother/parenthood from maternity and beyond until children leave home as young adults.

Best for Fathers

This award is about your support for fathers/partners at every stage of their children’s development. We are interested in your support for fathers/partners and how you support the parenting responsibilities of men throughout their careers.

Best for Carers & Eldercare

Approximately one in seven of your workforce will be caring for someone who is older, disabled or seriously ill and this number is expected to increase. We are interested in hearing about innovative, practical and effective ways of identifying and supporting employees with caring responsibilities

Best Family Network (sponsored by BlckBx)

More and more organisations are seeing the value employee networks provide. Networks have been shown to be an effective way to encourage peer-to-peer support, raise awareness of work-life issues and develop a flexible and inclusive workplace culture.

Best for All-Round Flexibility

Tell us about flexible (hybrid, agile, smart, dynamic etc.) working in your organisation from recruitment stage to embedded flexibility for all employees. This might be working patterns that flex according to location, time or hours. We are interested in how roles are assessed for flexibility prior to recruitment and how you ensure that prospective employees know that flexibility is an option when they apply for a job and can discuss it at interview without prejudice.

We want to hear about your approach to family/employee friendly working practices, policies, and culture. What was the purpose of creating such a culture and how has this benefitted your employees and your business? What makes you unique compared to other organisations when it comes to supporting employees to integrate home and work life, in particular employees who have family/caring responsibilities? What evidence can you provide of your flexible/agile working culture and practices and what difference has it made to your business success?

Best Small Employer

We want to hear about your approach to family/employee friendly working practices, policies, and culture. What was the purpose of creating such a culture and how has this benefitted your employees and your business? What makes you unique compared to other organisations of your size when it comes to supporting employees to integrate home and work life, in particular employees who have family/caring responsibilities? What evidence can you provide of your flexible/agile working culture and practices and what difference has it made to your business success?

You can enter this category if you employ 100 or fewer employees and have a turnover of less than £10,000,000.

Best for Mental Health & Wellbeing

Employers play a critical role in supporting employee mental health and wellbeing and with the fast-changing nature of work, there has never been a more vital time for organisations to ensure they are supporting the wellbeing of employees. Not simply because it’s the “right thing to do”, but because creating a healthy working culture makes sound business sense. Working flexibly is often part of the solution. We are interested in hearing about innovative, practical and effective ways of identifying and supporting employees with mental health issues and how you promote good mental health and wellbeing in your organisation.

Best for Supporting Different Pathways to Parenthood

For many employees, the journey to starting or building a family is not easy and the mental health impact of this is often suffered in silence. Ongoing IVF treatment, numerous fertility investigations, multiple adoption appointments and assessments all take their toll physically, emotionally and financially. Is your company one which recognises this and offers effective support?

How do you support all the different pathways into parenthood that your employees have within your organisation? This is an opportunity to tell us what you do to ensure that you are thinking about the different types of journeys your employees go on, and how you can support them. For example, you can tell us about policies and practices you have including, but not restricted to, fertility, IVF, adoption, surrogacy, and pregnancy loss. We are also keen to see evidence that policies and practices aren’t just confined to high value or senior level employees but are available at all levels within the organisation.

Family-Friendly Champion of the Year (sponsored by Arnold Clark)

Is there someone in your organisation who has gone above and beyond in the area of family-friendly/flexible working in the last 12 months? It could be someone who has implemented a new family policy, set up an innovative new scheme or programme that has benefited parents and carers, or who raises awareness for the cause across the organisation. This person could be an HR staff member, a Family Network Chair, or a family/flexible working champion.

We want to know who deserves special recognition in this field. This should be an individual who shows outstanding commitment and is passionate about driving change across the organisation. We would like to know what this person has achieved and why they deserve to be recognised as ‘family-friendly champion of the year.’