NATS was presented with the highly coveted Grand Prix award at the Employee Benefits Awards 2025, which took place on Friday 27 June at The Honourable Artillery Company (HAC) in London.
The Grand Prix is the ‘winner of winners’ accolade and is selected from the winning entries across all other categories. It is given to the organisation that most impressed judges throughout the process with its overall achievements.
NATS was the winning entry in the Best benefits to support menopause category. It was recognised due to its set of strategic goals to enable women to thrive in fulfilling careers and improve the lives of their partners and families. These included increasing the percentage of women in both the workforce and leadership roles, reducing its gender pay gap, improving the retention and sickness absence of female staff, and helping managers to support their teams.
It also became the first aviation organisation to introduce a menopause policy and support, and collaborated with the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to successfully influence its revision of its licensing requirements. Regulations stipulated that women had to wait two weeks when starting or changing HRT medication. As a result of NATS’ presentation of clinical evidence on the side effects of HRT and its impact on aviation safety, the CAA reduced its unfit period from two weeks to 48 hours.
The judges said that the organisation’s influence extended beyond its own business and out into the wider world, which was very impressive.
Lauren Rolfe, senior reward specialist at NATS, said: “We’re blown away to win, we put our heart and soul into this. It’s such an important topic and we wanted to improve life for women and employees’ partners. We’ve made an impact and it’s so lovely to be recognised by the judges for this. Changing the licensing requirements for air traffic controllers has been a significant amendment that has impacted the whole industry.”
Employee Benefits extends its congratulations to all of the winners, highly commended entries, and finalists for the awards this year, which represented the most exciting and innovative HR, reward and benefits strategies, supportive teams and outstanding individuals in the field of reward and benefits.
Employee Benefits would like to thank the event sponsors, esteemed judging panel and all of the organisations that entered the awards. Keep an eye out on the Employee Benefits website for more details about the winning entries and a gallery of highlights from the event.
More details about the Employee Benefits Awards 2026 will be given later this year.
