Jobs4mums awards

The time has come to nominate your employer/ company for this year's Jobs4mums awards. The deadline has been moved to Friday 28 November 2009, so print off the form below and fill it in NOW

Britain's most family friendly employers have been recognised at the Jobs4Mums Awards ceremony at Downing Street.

BT, Henmans LLP and Achieving Quality Leads received the Jobs4Mums awards, organised by jobs4mothers.com and Take a Break Magazine.

The awards were presented by Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Minister for Women and Equality, Harriet Harman at Downing Street on Monday 12 January.

The awards recognise businesses who see the value in offering flexible, family friendly work to employees.

The competition was judged by Harriet Harman, co-directors of jobs4mothers.com Selina Smith and Kristina Abdat, and deputy editor of Take a Break Sophie Hearsey.

Over 1000 employees winner – BT

Telecoms giant BT employs 111,858 people in 61 countries. Flexible working is available to every employee – and a good proportion take up the offer: it has 14,500 homeworkers, 5,000 part time workers and nearly 400 job sharers. It also offers a number of other flexible working options such as compressed hours and term time working. It reckons about 32 per cent of its work force have a child under 16. “At BT, 97% of new mums return to work after maternity leave, compared with a national average of 40%. We also provide a childcare scheme so our employees are not just working smarter but they also have a smart salary, saving up to £1,000 per year on the cost of childcare” says Caroline Waters, Director of BT People and Policy.

Henmans LLP is an Oxford-based law firm with 136 employees. It has 26 employees with children under 10; all of them use the flexitime hours it offers, and several work flexibly or work from home. The firm has an onsite café where parents in the firm can bring their families, and social events are organised to include the children too. At least one solicitor was made a partner while on maternity leave; while a managing partner and head of department work a four day week. “We do not regard maternity leave as an obstacle to promotion!” says Viv Matthews, Head of HR for the firm.

Achieving Quality Leads is a sales consultancy firm based in Chiswick, south west London. It employs 8 staff, of which seven are women and three have children. All employees work part time from home and choose their own hours. The pay levels are good – a minimum of £15 an hour plus a quarterly performance bonus. “All our work is flexible – that is part of the company ethos,” explains Larry Miller co-director of the company. “Everyone works from home, even the directors. That means we can attract people who once had highly professional jobs, but either could not, or chose not to continue with them, due to family or other commitments.”