Insurance company Legal & General has been dubbed Britain's best employer because it retains a good pension scheme, has refused to offshore jobs to India and consults with its staff on business decisions.
Trade union Amicus, who announced the award this week, said that L&G exceeded all the requirements needed to be nominated for the award.
General Secretary Derek Simpson said that the award was designed to promote best practice in workplace relations and to show that fairness and good business were mutually inclusive.
"L&G involve staff reps in business decisions and they have an active equal pay policy,” he said.
"They invest in the skills of their people, they have a good pension scheme, won't offshore their call centres to the Far East and they make a profit.
"It doesn't sound much when you say it out loud but it was more than most employers can manage."
But he added, "sadly, L&G is the exception that proves the rule. British business is shot through with a culture of short-termism and short-sightedness."
The award came as rival insurance giant Royal & Sun Alliance announced that it was moving 1,100 UK jobs to India. A second rival, Norwich Union, has also announced the transfer of 7,000 jobs by 2007.
Amicus said that the loss of call centre jobs are just the tip of the iceberg. The vast bulk of jobs being offshored over the last year are back office, something that Amicus’ Dave Flemming described as “an unprecedented threat to UK jobs and the economy.”
"The government needs to make raising skills a priority. Policies to enable to UK to compete need to be actioned with urgency to reverse employer under investment in training and development which will hamstring the UK service sector if it is allowed to continue,” he added.
Errr ... L&G has just announced it will be outsourcing and offshoring it's IT development to India !