Leading-edge HR practice was on display in all four categories of the People Management Award 2008, which attracted a record 150 entries. They came from all sectors and ranged in scale and complexity from a building company’s state-of-the-art talent management programme to a local authority’s new approach to people resourcing; from a change project that transformed employee relations at a troubled catering firm to a “green champions” scheme.

Several of the 16 finalists had come up with integrated solutions to a series of HR challenges, and it was the sheer creativity and imagination of these entries that really wowed the judges. “They were able to take different people-related issues and knit them together to create solutions that touched multiple parts of the people agenda,” says Jackie Orme, CIPD chief executive and chair of the panel of judges who chose the overall winner.