Balance In Business Awards 2025 Gala Dinner

4 June 2025

Prestigious Awards

Keynote Speakers

Great Networking

On Wednesday 4th June, we celebrated the outstanding companies leading the way in gender balance, especially at the Exco and Direct Report levels.

Our partners:

This year’s Awards Cocktail Reception and Gala Dinner was an opportunity to celebrate businesses driving real change and improving gender representation in the workplace. The Gala Dinner recognized the leaders shaping a fairer, more inclusive future for business.

At the Gala Dinner, we:

Celebrated the achievements of top FTSE350 and UK top 50 private companies driving gender balance in business.
Welcomed our esteemed judging panel: Helen Pitcher OBE, Cain Ullah, Stanislav Shekshnia and Anna Sofat.
Networked with industry leaders, gaining insights, and connecting with professionals passionate about creating a more inclusive business landscape.
Enjoyed an inspiring evening of collaboration, recognition, and progress.

Awards matter: they hold everyone accountable and actually people like to win awards

New for 2025...

We’ve added 3 more awards to encourage more companies to join our journey of connecting and learning and achieving better gender balance especially at Exco and Direct Report levels:

Outstanding Progress Award
We’re shining the light on effort and achievement irrespective of position. It doesn’t matter where your company stands on FWL. What matters is how much progress your company has made in the last 3 years! We are shortlisting the top 30 best performers.
Sector Excellence Award
We also get it that different sectors have their own challenges so we are rewarding those companies who stand out amongst their peers in their sector
BiB Roll of Honour
We have created a special Roll of Honour for BiB Award shortlisted companies which are continuously implementing new policies and actions contributing to gender representation. Our goal is to build a community of businesses committed to Gender Balance

We have joined forces with One Loud Voice, who not only has helped us design a more incisive assessment application form; furthermore Anna Sofat, Chair of One Loud Voice will be joining the Judges’ BiB Awards 2025 panel.

We ran a CEO-led Breakfast Roundtable on Best Practices in gender balancing in the UK for CEOs and Chairs of FTSE 100, FTSE250 and Top 50 UK Companies at the London Stock Exchange on December 5^th.

Continuing the success of previous years...

The existing Awards – Recognising organisations who are working towards improving gender balance – introducing new policies and bringing to life innovative initiatives

Trailblazer ExCo & Direct Reports (FTSE 100, FTSE 250 and Private Companies)
Best overall (FTSE 100, FTSE 250 and Private Companies)
Best Strategy (FTSE 100, FTSE 250 and Private Companies)
Most Impact (FTSE 100, FTSE 250 and Private Companies)

All companies are different, but we notice some clear trends and lessons:

Accountability must be shared: more and more companies have initiatives to incentivise all layers of the organisation to build more equitable, inclusive teams.
‘What gets measured, gets managed’ – know your data, embed it into the company’s strategy, measure your resultsWhen recruiting, cast your net wide.
Inclusive leadership training for senior leaders is critical to help improve understanding of the challenges to inclusion and gender equity and become active agents for change.
The importance of agile working policies – for example, not only flexible parental leave programmes but also parental transition coaching, return to work adjustment days, and networking events for parents
It is a leadership issue, a business transformation issue not a women’s issue nor men’s

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us on info@balanceinbusiness.org