The office mascot at Meteorite Marketing is a stuffed ship’s cat in the window. “If curiosity killed the cat,” its little catchphrase goes, “we say the cat died nobly.”

This sparky marketing agency aims to target the right clients, rather than interrupting everyone’s day. Holly Bocock, public relations manager, explains: “If you are a cat person, you won’t receive anything on dogs.”

The company tries to give staff the benefits they would like too. In the case of these 53 people, with an average age of 29 and a career that values looking glam, this includes sales of Estée Lauder and Mac and Jo Malone goodies, all in aid of charity.

Employees also enjoy unusual nights out, with quarterly company meetings followed by events such as “sock monkey” contests in the pub, awarding prizes for the most creatively dressed puppet made from a sock.

Turning up the Heat pays off

Strong training and a sense that work is to be enjoyed add up to Heat powering past its rivals into top spot this year

BACKGROUND

• Hats off to great leadership

• Getting the message across loud and clear

• Fly high with the X Factor

• Why it pays to know what you’re doing

BACKGROUND

• Charity wins top small company award

• Special awards for best practice

• Rules of engagement

• 100 Best SME's to work for 2008

Multimedia

• Highlights from the awards ceremony

People give the firm high marks for atmosphere. There is a strong sense of family, which gets a positive score of 90%, and a lot of fun to be had with the team (91%), while staff feel fully involved at work (89%). Clients include BlackBerry (unsurprisingly, managers and above get these devices), Costa and Marriott hotels, and people say they get valuable experience at work (91%).

Meteorite doesn’t feel it needs a mission statement, but the company tries to do its bit to help the world around it. There are events such as auctions and bake-offs for charity, and the company kitchen is stocked with fairly traded tea and coffee.

The firm has recently moved to an office in central London and “Holly’s trolley”, which formerly provided the Friday night drinks, has been replaced by a fully-fledged bar.

Although 18 people joined last year, employees feel a good sense of job security (87%) and say work is an important part of their lives (88%), both top five scores. There is an incentive to stay, with a sabbatical after five years. The firm is flexible when new family needs surface, offering options to work from home.

Meteorite sponsors qualifications such as MBAs, offers mentoring and also arranges external training courses for managers — who are good leaders (89%) and motivate people to give their best daily (84%).

In fact, things are so good at this new entrant to the list, that some fresh joiners probably don’t know what has hit them.

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