A SOFTWARE company has won a national award for supporting working parents and helping staff achieve a healthy work-life balance.

Madgex, based in Gloucester Place, Brighton, received the Top Employer Award for businesses with 26 to 250 employees.

Judges at The Workingmums.co.uk Top Employer Awards praised the company's female career progression, support for dads and a strong emphasis on flexible working and work life balance across the board.

Madgex human resource director Hanna Smith said the award was a great achievement.

She said: "We focus a lot of our efforts on creating a flexible, supportive working environment and are proud that we enable different family working arrangements.

"As a result, we have a creative, diverse team of experts. However we want to do more.

"While 65 per cent of our senior management are female, they only represent 30 per cent of all Madgex employees and 20 per cent of our tech teams.

"We are committed to increasing the number of women working in technology and our ambition is to become gender neutral."

The awards celebrate the UK’s most progressive businesses who encourage gender diversity and flexible working.

Employers were shortlisted across eight categories, including nominations from Lloyds Banking Group, Vodafone, The IT Touch and Carillion.

Madgex was also shortlisted for the Best Dad’s Award, which recognises companies who have specific policies aimed at working fathers.

Gillian Nissim, founder of Workingmums.co.uk, said the judges were impressed by Madgex's flexible, inclusive culture.

She said: "Madgex had compelling figures about career progression.

"Eighty five per cent of senior managers were promoted internally, half of them working mums who work flexible hours.

"We praised in particular the company's sponsorship of Spring Forward, a month-long series of events celebrating the role of women in digital culture.

"For a business of that size to be investing in this was a significant commitment.

"We were also impressed by Madgex's commitment to hosting the She Codes initiative, which promotes best practice in coding for women."