The award recognises Armstrong’s commitment to engage with its staff, with the top-rated Three Stars acknowledged as ‘extraordinary’. The award was presented at a celebration event at the Berkeley Hotel, Knightsbridge on Wednesday 31st January.

Best Companies, the organisation behind the prestigious ‘Sunday Times Top 100 Best Companies to Work For’ lists, surveyed the staff at Armstrong and these responses were converted into an index score. These questions provided comprehensive feedback across eight areas of workplace engagement including leadership, well being, personal growth and fair deal.

Jonathan Austin, Chief Executive, Best Companies commented: “Armstrong Consultant’s 2007 accreditation is an outstanding achievement. It confirms their commitment to the on-going journey of workplace engagement. Our role is to set a rigorous benchmark so that organisations can become even better employers.”

The four founding directors of Armstrong strive to maintain a hands-on approach to both running the company and interacting with all levels of staff. All team members receive six monthly reviews to highlight any concerns to managers and regular team events are organised throughout the year.

Chris Bayne, Managing Director, commented: “We are thrilled to be awarded the top star rating by Best Companies. For our staff to be engaged with us as a company results in not only a great atmosphere to work in but increased productivity and service to our customers. We firmly believe in investing in our staff and aim to improve our score for 2008!”

This year, 434 organisations registered to go for ‘Star Status’, and since September over 100,000 employees from these organisations have been surveyed. In total 273 organisations achieved ‘Star Status’ success;

• 42 organisations achieved Three Star Status

• 107 organisations achieved Two Star Status

• 124 Companies achieved One Star Status

About Armstrong

Established in 1993, Armstrong Consultants specialise in the development, supply and implementation of a comprehensive range of fully integrated service, finance and CRM solutions.

With over 1,000 supported sites, and offices in the north and south of England, Armstrong’s proactive philosophy towards software development and configuration enables them to respond to differing system requirements without the need to introduce bespoke solutions. Staying ahead of technology, whilst still providing highly configurable ‘off the shelf’ software, ensures that they can deliver an advanced business solution matched with first class consultancy and support services.

Their expertise includes areas of industry such as charities, publishing, aerospace, finance, transport, business services, telecommunications, manufacturing, retailing and the public sector; providing customers with software systems to manage their organisations efficiently. If ‘off the shelf’ software does not meet a customer’s requirements, they can provide a bespoke solution - software designed and written by an Armstrong project team.

Armstrong Consultants are the software authors of Service Manager Editions, Asset Manager, FocalPoint and GoldLink. They are also a Gold Partner of FrontRange Solutions, with their GoldMine Corporate product and the number one Access Accounts Specialist Centre in the UK.
 

About Best Companies Ltd

Best Companies Ltd. is dedicated to `Helping make the World a better Workplace’. We achieve this by providing organisations that participate in our research with high quality data about how engaged their employees are with their business. The data is compiled by utilizing our highly academically rigorous methodology that has been created by asking over 400,000 employees about what they want from their workplace experience. Having surveyed over 1,900 organisations we have a unique ability to provide extremely strong benchmarks, both by industry sector as well as identifying best practice within the UK labour market.

Best Companies researches and compiles The Sunday Times Best Companies to Work for lists, and we have a wealth of real-life examples of best practice, that can show you how to give your business a better chance in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

We have been providing the unique methodology for The Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For since 2001. Our organisation also conducts a wide range of ongoing detailed research based on our authoritative and highly rigorous methodology.
 

The Accreditation

The Accreditation, developed by Best Companies is based on a star rating system where one star is first class, two stars are outstanding, and three stars are extraordinary. Organisational successes have been defined using data from the 2007 Best Companies to Work For survey which involved surveying over 100,000 employees from 434 companies.

The Best Companies survey is designed to measure employee engagement and uses 70 questions to gain a comprehensive view of employee engagement across eight factors. Every company that goes for Best Companies Accreditation is given a Best Companies Index score (BCI). This score (on a scale of 1 to 1000) is defined from employee’s responses to the sixteen key questions within the Best Companies survey. ‘Star Status’ is determined by the ‘BCI’ score and the specific cut-off points for One, Two, and Three Star Accreditation remain constant year on year.

PICTURE CAPTION: Claire Jones, Marketing Manager, receives Armstrong’s Three Star accreditation award from Jonathan Austin, Chief Executive of Best Companies.