Top Employer Awards

Our keynote speakers at the 2023 Top Employer Awards will be Jane Portas. 

Jane Portas is a financial expert, public speaker, and author of The Risks in Life Series of award-winning insight reports and financial wellbeing guides.  She is the creator of 6 Moments That Matter, a unique life-stage approach combining money and life wellbeing to help people live a secure financial life, and to enable organisations to improve fair financial futures. Her work, including her authorship of Insuring Women’s Futures’ manifesto, is credited with informing the adoption by the UK Money and Pensions Service of a gendered approach to financial guidance and a focus by financial firms on inclusive customer approaches and closing the gender pension gap.  It has featured in multiple media including the Financial Times, BBC News, and various magazines.

Jane is a Chartered Accountant and former financial services advisory partner of two of the “big four” accounting and professional services firms.  She is a member of Women’s Business Council, an adviser to the charity Surviving Economic Abuse, and a co-founder of Insuring Women’s Futures.

Gillian Nissim

Founder, WM People 

A former Senior Communications Executive, Gillian has worked at a number of different organisations with very different cultures and attitudes towards family friendly working policies. After the birth of her second child she decided to set up her own company to cater for the businesses who did appreciate the vast experience and high calibre of professionals who had become parents, and wanted to find challenging and interesting jobs that offered more flexibility than traditional office-based, Monday – Friday, 9:00 – 5:00 jobs.

A graduate of Birmingham University, Gillian launched workingmums.co.uk in 2006, followed by workingdads.co.uk in 2018 and workingwise.co.uk in 2019.

Jennifer Liston-Smith

Head of Thought Leadership for Bright Horizons Work+Family Solutions.

For over 20 years, Jennifer has advised employers in banking, professional services, STEM and wider sectors on programmes to improve flexible working, wellbeing, inclusion, family-friendly programmes and gender parity. She is a sought-after speaker, writer, conference moderator and consultant on these topics and more.

Jennifer set-up, and for a decade led, the Coaching & Consultancy side of what became Bright Horizons Work+Family Solutions, defining best practice and ‘next practice’, designing interventions and evaluating their impact and ROI, developing coaches and coaching capability, originating and lead authoring the online Parental Leave Toolkit and Parental Leave Toolkit for Managers.

She now focuses on identifying overarching trends through research, through advising employers and translating these insights into solutions and practical actions. An Oxford graduate, Jennifer holds Masters degrees in both Law and Experimental Psychology and several qualifications and accreditations in coaching psychology and coaching supervision.

Andy Lake

Director, Flexibility.co.uk

Andy Lake is a specialist in Smart Working, and has worked on dozens of implementations and evaluations across the private, public and voluntary sectors. He is the author of Smart Flexibility management book and numerous other publications researching and providing guidance on Smart Working and on the future of work. Andy has worked as an advisor with the UK Cabinet Office and the European Commission. He is the author of the British Standards PAS3000: Code of Practice for Smart Working, which all UK central government departments and agencies have to follow as they modernise working practices. Andy also runs the Smart Work Network (www.smart-work.net), a peer collaboration network for people implementing Smart Working in their organisations, and in October 2020 launched a European counterpart to this, Smart Work Europe.

David Dunbar

Head of Digital Workspace at the Department of Work and Pensions 

David former roles include heading BT’s Flexible Working Services division, which offered a range of managed services around agile working, as well as owning BT’s own internal flexible working programme across 22 countries. He was also Head of Digital Workplace at Nationwide Building Society,  responsible for introducing innovative environments and culture change, by bringing together HR, Property and IT to drive change across the organisation. In addition he has delivered consultancy around Digital Workplace, Dynamic Working and Workplace Transformation to public and private sector organisations of all shapes and size.

He is currently the Head of Digital Workspace at the Department of Work and Pensions, the UK’s largest public sector department, where he is responsible for the infrastructure to support new ways of working, for modernising the tools, desktop, and mobile solutions used by around 90,000 employees, and for delivering new office and hub space to support collaborative and agile working.

Salma Shah

Writer and Founder of Mastering your Power (www.salmashah.com)

Dr Clare Kelliher

Professor of Work & Organisation, Cranfield University

Clare Kelliher, BSc, MA, PhD is Professor of Work and Organisation at Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield University. Clare holds a PhD in Organisational Behaviour from London Business School, an MA in Industrial Relations from the University of Warwick and a first degree in management from the University of Surrey.

Her research interests centre around the organisation of work and the management of the employment relationship. She has a long-standing interest in flexible working and recently directed a major project concerned with examining the impact of flexible working on performance, sponsored by seven companies. She has also recently completed a project looking at employee engagement in multi-national organisations, funded by the US Society for HRM Foundation.

Clare is the author of many published papers and book chapters and regularly speaks at national and international conferences. Her recent book, New Ways of Organising Work: developments, perspectives and experiences, co-edited with Julia Richardson was published by Routledge. In 2012 she also published a text book on Strategic HRM together with Katie Truss and David Mankin. She has considerable experience running management programmes and advising organisations both in the UK and overseas. She frequently acts as an external examiner for doctoral and Masters degrees at universities in the UK and overseas.

Kim Chaplain

Associate Director for Work, Centre for Ageing Better 

Kim is Associate Director for Work, supporting one of the Centre for Ageing Better’s priority goals of Fulfilling work.

2021 Awards

This year was a special awards focused celebrating best practice adopted during the coronavirus pandemic, and the categories are considered key areas for success during the pandemic.

Best for D&I – sponsored by PwC

Winner: IBM UK Ltd.

Best for Mental Health – sponsored by Kearney

Winner: McDonald’s Restaurants Limited

Best for Line Manager Support – sponsored by Standard Chartered Bank

Winner: UBS

Best for Family Support – sponsored by McDonald’s

Winner: Teach First

Best for Flexible Working 

Winner: PwC

Best for Employee Engagement

Winner: Sky Betting & Gaming

Overall Top Employer Award

Winner: McDonald’s Restaurants Limited