Hangar Seven run an Employee of the Month award whereby everyone votes for a crew member who has really gone the extra mile and delivered against their company values. It's a great accolade and the winner receives £100 to spend as they wish. They also have a yearly overall winner who receives £500. This is a person with the most votes over the year. Hangar Seven operate a company wide profit share scheme and they have the most elaborate fully paid for Christmas parties in the industry.

Hangar Seven run an Employee of the Month award whereby everyone votes for a crew member who has really gone the extra mile and delivered against their company values. It's a great accolade and the winner receives £100 to spend as they wish. They also have a yearly overall winner who receives £500. This is a person with the most votes over the year. Hangar Seven operate a company wide profit share scheme and they have the most elaborate fully paid for Christmas parties in the industry.

Golin/Virgo have ‘G4 Superhero' and the ‘Veritable Virgo' awards. These awards are announced publicly at team meetings and the winners are chosen from a short-list of peer-nominated candidates which are reviewed by the leadership team to find the winner. The awards recognise and reward individuals who model the company values and behaviours to achieve exceptional results. The winner receives a bottle of champagne, and the choice of an experience, either dinner in a top London restaurant, a spa day, a trip to see a west end show, a flight in a hot air balloon or a chance to drive a top sports car. The overall winner at the end of the year gets the opportunity to travel to one of their global offices - recent winners have travelled to New York and Chicago for a week of cross-office/cultural learning.

Golin and Virgo are led by President Matt (Golin) and two CEOs/MDs Sarah and Angie (Virgo). All three are all very well respected in the communications industry and this is a definite draw for employees who choose to join Golin/Virgo. They are all very hands on and accessible, encouraging team members to come and pick their brains about any challenges they may be facing as well as actively mentoring junior members in order to nurture their raw talents. They all bring the values to life setting an example to the team and perpetuate an environment where hard work and outstanding performance is rewarded and success is celebrated on a regular basis. The senior leadership has high visibility at team meetings in both office locations, presenting, sharing and demonstrating excellence and best practice across the company.

At Global Reach Partners they ensure all of their staff receive a comprehensive induction programme, to give them all the skills to be successful in their role as well as giving them the training and exposure to understand what the organisation does and how departments work together to produce the end result via their job swap timetable. Their induction programme is made up of a variety of line manager training, departmental job swaps, education on company policies and procedures and a session about the companies mission, vision, core values and culture. Global Reach Partners' sales team are currently going through an internal, in-depth training programme which has been hosted by a number of senior sales managers and team members. So far they have covered off communication filters, buying signals and will cover products and security of funds for the remainder of the year. They encourage their sales team to continue their own development by using the resources and experience around the business by planning training such as call coaching and meeting preparation.

At Global Reach Partners they ensure all of their staff receive a comprehensive induction programme, to give them all the skills to be successful in their role as well as giving them the training and exposure to understand what the organisation does and how departments work together to produce the end result via their job swap timetable. Their induction programme is made up of a variety of line manager training, departmental job swaps, education on company policies and procedures and a session about the companies mission, vision, core values and culture. Global Reach Partners' sales team are currently going through an internal, in-depth training programme which has been hosted by a number of senior sales managers and team members. So far they have covered off communication filters, buying signals and will cover products and security of funds for the remainder of the year. They encourage their sales team to continue their own development by using the resources and experience around the business by planning training such as call coaching and meeting preparation.

The company offer complimentary healthy breakfasts, lunches and snacks and as previously mentioned offer access to exercise. They are looking into a new idea of giving each employee a pair of slippers to show that we care about them from head to toe

The company provide personal rewards for their employees. Upgrade holiday booking, upgrade hotel, upgrade flights. They also do spontaneous parties on top of the quarterly, monthly and weekly socials. Training - they allow employees to do training that is not necessarily linked to their role.

Excelian understand that in the current economic climate getting the most out of their people is more important than ever. Due to the nature of their business, almost half of their employees are not from the UK. This means that many of them are not registered with a GP, therefore Excelian provide there employees with unlimited access to a top private GP practice with offices across the city. They also offer healthy breakfast at their London HQ, providing a selection of healthy cereals and wholemeal bread for toast, to set them up for the day.

The nature of Excelian's business means that they have a variety of career paths open to staff. This may be as a technical subject matter expert, project manager or future leader of a division/practice. For this reason, they have introduced ‘Excelian Academies'. These are a series of long term L&D programmes designed to support their staff in whichever career path they choose. The Excelian Leadership Academy is a two year programme for those wishing to follow a management career path, the Excelian Project Management Academy is a 12 month programme for those who wish to develop their project management skills and possibly become project managers in the future and the Excelian Capital Markets & Commodities SME Academy has a selection of courses available for staff to choose from to allow them to develop the skills required to continue to develop as an SME in their chosen field. This is open ended, with courses being repeated throughout the year to allow for attendance between client assignments. The Technology Leadership Academy is a three year programme open to all consultants working within the Technical Consulting Practice. Those enrolled within the Leadership, Project Management or Technology Leadership academies are assigned a mentor from their ranks of senior staff to provide additional support. For ad hoc courses, relating to business objectives or client requirement, Excelian offer both classroom and online options, allowing the flexibility required in a consultancy business.

Employee development is supported through Paid Training Active Succession planning, in which 4 out of the 5 general managers and 3 out of the 5 head chefs have worked their way up through the ranks to these senior positions. They have a rising stars initiative where they develop and train individuals at junior level who have been identified as having the potential to grow into their future managers. 60 senior and middle managers have completed an inventory of individual work attitude, motivation and behaviours assessment and as a result have then had a personal development and training plan specifically designed around their needs and skills shortages. From this process around 20 management development training modules have been drafted and are open to all people within the organisation, regardless of their position level. There are training journeys in place for each and every position level in the business with a series of core and developmental training modules which act as steps on the ladder to their next promotion. Such courses are run with sufficient frequency on the monthly training calendar so that everyone can take their journey at their own pace.

The organisation seeks to reward employees through supplier and cultural trips on an annual basis where approximately 160 staff have the opportunity to go on overseas trips to places such as France, The Netherlands, Italy and The Czech Republic, to meet at first hand the producers of the food and beverages that they prepare and serve in the restaurants and hotels. This is a highly prized reward and has numerous benefits: it feeds the passion their staff have for their product; it increases their product knowledge; it engages them in a relaxed and social environment with other staff from other locations that they perhaps do not know; allows them to learn from each other; fosters friendships and team spirit and it creates opportunities for career advancement, exposing staff to possibilities in the other restaurants. The trips are highly prized. Staff are nominated by their Heads of Department and decisions on the final nominations are made by the Directors.

The Buzzacott Stuart Defries Memorial Fund (the Fund) – in 2003, the Partners set up a charitable trust in memory of a former Partner, Stuart Defries, who was killed in a tragic accident. Volunteering initiatives and community programmes under the auspices of the Fund. These include The Access Project, which helps bright but disadvantaged teenagers to improve grades and access to university, New Horizon programmes for NEET youngsters and a local primary school reading programme. One-off volunteering activities/team events this year included activities with KidsCo, with a local football summer school and with a city farm. The Fund also awards grants every year to charities, chiefly supporting disadvantaged communities in boroughs bordering the City, with a particular focus on children and young people and also through the staff suggestion and matched giving scheme.

Instant recognition: Employees are nominated for and awarded a bottle of champagne or a gift voucher for exceptional performance contribution, in particular living the Firm's values. Awards are communicated on the intranet.

Everyone across the agency impacts on the success of their business, whether cost-savings, improving cash flow or creating award-winning work, so each month individuals can nominate themselves for the Impact of the Month Award. The board short-lists the best nominations, they then present their work to the rest of the company at the first Monday morning meeting of the month. Each member of staff is given a voting sheet with a list of the nominations so that they are all able to vote on a winner of each category. At the following Monday morning meeting the winners of each category are announced, and presented with retail vouchers from one of the Co-Founders. This contributes to the Star of the Month. Each month the Board vote for the Star of the Month. Star of the Month recognises employees from across the agency who have gone “above and beyond “to achieve success at work. At the end of the year, each month's winner's name is placed into the Star of the Year draw to win a chance to work in the international office of an Oriella PR network partner for two weeks. Previous winners have chosen Australia, India and San Francisco.

Everyone across the agency impacts on the success of their business, whether cost-savings, improving cash flow or creating award-winning work, so each month individuals can nominate themselves for the Impact of the Month Award. The board short-lists the best nominations, they then present their work to the rest of the company at the first Monday morning meeting of the month. Each member of staff is given a voting sheet with a list of the nominations so that they are all able to vote on a winner of each category. At the following Monday morning meeting the winners of each category are announced, and presented with retail vouchers from one of the Co-Founders. This contributes to the Star of the Month. Each month the Board vote for the Star of the Month. Star of the Month recognises employees from across the agency who have gone “above and beyond “to achieve success at work. At the end of the year, each month's winner's name is placed into the Star of the Year draw to win a chance to work in the international office of an Oriella PR network partner for two weeks. Previous winners have chosen Australia, India and San Francisco.

blu eCigs have a fairly relaxed environment, which means their employees feel able to offer feedback and regularly suggest ideas openly and they do this in a variety of ways. They conduct SurveyMonkey online questionnaires, encourage people to send ideas using their postbox and make the most of iPad technology. Every Friday, when they meet at the end of the day for a blether over a glass of wine or beer, they have an informal Q&A session, opening the postbox and answering the questions posed on the postcards. Originally they only had a few questions asked, but it's really snowballed with people wanting to find out anything from how much money they made that week to what the weather's going to be like at the weekend. blu eCig's SurveyMonkey questionnaires generate a great response too, and whenever they're unsure of the right direction to take, such as where to book for the Christmas night out, they put it to the vote. They are a democracy after all! At their September all-staff, they used iPads for staff to vote on questions posed throughout the session. This was the basis for a competition and kept the audience alive and engaged throughout the entire day.

blu eCigs changed “you time” to “blu time.” As a thank you, they give each employee £100 to spend on themselves as part of their new wellbeing scheme. This money, which will be awarded every year, can be put towards anything that keeps people healthy and happy. This could be anything from playing sports, cooking classes, yoga or dance lessons. They also provide a healthcare scheme for employees offering gym memberships throughout the UK as part of their private healthcare account.