The Best Places To Work Awards started over 18 months ago. Back then it was just an idea for an online-only feature, and it has ballooned into a standalone awards ceremony in Central London.

It was a joy to see so many brilliant companies coming together and discussing ways to make the games industry a better place – because that is the point of these awards.

Of course, we’re here to celebrate excellence in the workplace, too. The games industry comes under fire at times, and legitimately, for its poor diversity, crunch, lack of job security and so on. But it’s also a brilliant, exciting, inspiring place to work, and we want to recognise that and hail the companies that get it right.

But perhaps more importantly, these awards are about education.

Everyone who takes part – whether they received a badge or not – can receive employee feedback so they can implement changes. As for those who don’t take part, we’ll be running features like this, where the winners share their secrets to a successful working environment.

Ultimately, we hope the Best Places To Work Awards will make the UK games industry a better place to be.

During the judging of these awards, we spoke to just shy of 2,500 games industry employees. Almost 90% of staff say that the games industry gives them a sense of purpose, over 92% are happy working in the games industry, and a whopping 97% of staff say they like the people they work with.

It wasn’t perfect, of course: 40% are dissatisfied with the gender diversity of games, and 19% think their companies are not doing enough to fix it. 25% say staffing levels are not adequate, and half of respondents feel that training could be improved at their company.

These are all areas we can work on, and we’ll be discussing through Gamesindustry.biz in the months ahead.

In the meantime, check out our interviews with the 19 winners of this years awards.

How the best places were judged

Every company that entered the awards was sent two sets of surveys. The first was an employer survey, which looked at benefits, pay, holiday, diversity, growth, stability and more.

The second survey was for employees, and featured statements that staff had to agree or disagree with. These included views on their management, culture, technical support and workload.

The employer survey accounted for 25% of the final score, with the employee responses accounting for the rest.

All 19 of our winning companies received an overall score of 85% or higher.