Working Dads Employer Awards 2025

The awards encourage employers to think more about what they do in this space and how they can better support fathers in the future to aid working families, attract and retain top talent, help close the gender pay gap and promote gender equality in the workplace.

We're thankful to our partner organisations who have been instrumental in bringing these awards to you: Business in the Community, CBI, CIPD, Future Men, Fatherhood Institute, Parenting Out Loud, Medical Women's Federation and Working Families.

For the awards, we have developed four key areas of focus based on existing research and common activities. These areas either represent best practice or highlight opportunities for improvement across the economy. Since we aim to encourage positive activity, an applying organisation does not need to excel in all areas to be recognised through these awards. Organisations can be acknowledged for excellence in a single area, such as flexible working, or for outstanding performance across all four areas.

The nomination categories are:

• Parenting Policies
• Flexible Working
• Support for Returning Fathers
• Leadership and Culture

We are committed to promoting continuous improvement; we not only recognise best practice but also good practice, which can vary significantly across sectors and organisations of different sizes. In particular, we acknowledge that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and some public sector organisations unlikely have the same resources to enhance parental leave policies as some multinationals, and this will be reflected in the judging criteria.

Some past winners of the awards include: E.ON, Nationwide Building Society, QBE, BMJ Publishing Group Ltd, PwC, John Lewis Partnership, Aon, Now Teach, Suffolk County Council, Aviva, and Vodafone.

The application process

Within each of these categories, the submitting organisation will be asked to provide some UK-relevant quantitative data, where available, and answer open-ended questions. If there is an area where you do not collect this data, do not worry - come and speak to us about it. You may still be able to secure the award in that category.

The quantitative questions cover topics such as the total number of part-time working men in the last financial year (under the flexible working category). The qualitative questions explore areas such as how your organisation’s culture and leadership support fathers (under the leadership and culture category).

The application process is designed to be straightforward while encouraging a degree of self-selection (ie organisations can choose which of the four areas they wish to submit to). Responses to the open-ended questions will be assessed by an expert panel consisting of third-sector organisations and academics with expertise in this area.

If your organisation submitted to a previous Working Dads Employer Awards, you will see some additional questions around this.

Entry criteria and guidance

Any employer that pays their UK employees holiday pay and has a presence and activity in the UK is eligible to submit an entry. Only one entry may be made per employer.

Entries from all sectors/industries are welcome. Please focus only on activity in the UK and UK data in your entry, and make sure that you have senior management approval to complete the nomination form. Entry is only available via the online Qualitrics platform.

Important dates

• Week commencing 13 of January - launch of nominations process
• 2 of April - close of nominations process (11.59pm)
• Exact date to be confirmed - Award ceremony in Parliament

When filling out your nomination form, ensure to:

• Be clear and concise in your answers, use plain English and avoid acronyms. There is a strict character count for each qualitative question, which you cannot go above.
• Explain the obvious - remember the assessors will not be familiar with your policies and procedures and they will not know what the company is as the application remains anonymous.
• Include any evidence of impacts where possible, including quantitative evidence. Preferably, this should be publicly accessible evidence (if possible).

Please refer to this Question and Answer document (MS Word , 25kb) should you have any questions.

Supporting information

You are not required to add any additional supporting information that is not requested in the application, and any additional information will not be considered by the panel of judges (assessors). Although, if you have publicly available evidence (ie, publicly accessible webpages, press releases, blogs etc) these weblinks can be included in your nomination submission where requested.

How to enter

Entries will be made through the Qualtrics survey platform. Qualtrics is an easy-to-use web-based survey tool used by businesses and researchers across the globe. Qualtrics meets the industry best practice standards. No word document submissions via email will be permitted, so do make sure to use the Qualtrics platform to complete the submission.

A word document version of the nomination form is available for the convenience of preparing the nomination submission for submission, but you must ensure to transfer this into Qualtrics before the nominations close.

It is possible to save your nomination on Qualtrics and come back to it later, but the deadline for the submission of nominations is 11.59pm on the 2 April 2025. There is no back button, so make sure you wish to proceed before clicking next on Qualtrics.

• Access the nomination form via Qualtrics (must be used to submit nomination)
• Word document for those who haven't submitted awards before (MS Word , 42kb) of the nomination form to aid in preparation
• Word document for those who have submitted awards before (MS Word , 48kb) of the nomination form

Confidentiality and anonymisation

All aspects of your application will be treated as highly confidential. Should we wish to cite material contained in your application in a public way, we will only do so if we explicitly obtain your permission first. We will share anonymised answers with the judging panel (assessors) for the awards.

Other than your organisation name at the beginning of the document, we ask that you endeavour to avoid explicitly mentioning the name of the organisation throughout your submission to ensure it will be judged anonymously. Please note that should your organisation win an award in any category, the identity of your organisation will be made public knowledge.

A small number of organisations will be chosen to develop case studies from amongst the winners. By submitting the nomination form, your organisation agrees to support and contribute to the development of a best practice case study.