Denplan is so proud of its employees that it used photographs of them in a recent recruitment advertising campaign, with posters displayed across its home town of Winchester, including the train station.

Its 332 staff return the favour, with 80% proud to work for the company, which provides a dental-care payment plan for 1.3m patients and covers 6,000 member dentists. It lays claim to 85% of the market share and returned profits of just under £6m last year.

Staff are very happy with the leadership of the company, where Denplan has some of the highest scores recorded — 85% of employees claim they have a great deal of faith in managing director Stephen Gates (ranking Denplan fourth), and 81% are inspired by him (the third-highest score). Gates makes a point of talking directly to people, rather than via e-mail, and attends most social events. Eight out of 10 staff believe he runs the business on sound moral principles.

Denplan lays particular emphasis on work- life balance and here, again, it is one of the top scorers in our survey. Flexi-working is popular and 46 employees are homeworkers, while morning meetings and training courses start at 9.30am, to allow people to take their children to school. More than three-quarters of the staff are happy with their work-life balance (the fourth-best score), and the 40% of them who feel exhausted most days when they get home is the third-smallest proportion among our

100 best companies.

Everyone gets profit- and performance- related pay, but staff would like to see higher salaries. Customer advisers earn an average £14,500, and just 16 people make more than £45,000. About 40% of employees do not believe they are paid fairly for their responsibilities, which ranks the company 49th on this issue; just one firm has more people who believe that their organisation offers them limited opportunities to grow.

There are dress-down Fridays during summer heatwaves and over Christmas, with bacon rolls eaten at desks and early finishes. Other socialising includes pub crawls, a summer fancy-dress party, and departmental “fun days” of barbecues and treasure hunts. Ad hoc rewards include cakes and ceilidhs, and a formal awards system of luxury gifts and extra holidays for top-level performance.

Denplan does its bit for charity with a “day of hats”, when staff pay a charity in order to wear a hat of their choice at work, along with cake sales and sponsored activities.

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