Winner : The SG Group
Runners-up: British Gas Business, Lansons
Communications
Supported by: EOC
Claire Owen did not set out to make her recruitment firm a paragon of flexible working when she founded it 14 years ago. But Stopgap, now known as SG Group, became just that because she believed in treating employees as human beings.

“I was wanting to run a business that people wanted to work for,” says Ms Owen, whose company is winner of the Gender Award for the second consecutive year and a runner-up for the Health and Wellbeing award. “It was all about being respectful of staff as individuals. They’re not ‘employees’, or job titles, or numbers – they’re real people with real lives. That has led naturally to adopting a much more flexible way of working.”