When the heat is on, so the saying goes, you really find out what your strengths are and who you want fighting by your side. For the 252 staff at HEAT, winner of this year’s Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work For contest, team spirit, inspiring leadership and great craic are the pillars on which its success are founded.

The results were announced at the Sunday Times Awards Dinner in Battersea Evolution in London on 28 February 2008 and this year 868 organisations sought a place on the list and more than 180,000 employees were surveyed proving that indeed the employees make the difference.

HEAT Limited, the Belfast based heating specialist, has topped the rankings in the prestigious annual Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work For, the list sets the benchmark for employee satisfaction in the UK and HEAT Employees give a 76.1% positive score for teams and departments working well together. Teamwork is key when 90% of your staff work on-site, installing and maintaining domestic central heating across Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland as well as England.

HEAT are the only Northern Irish company to have ever achieved this enviable position in this employee driven assessment of how will a business engages its staff and the bond that exists between all the staff at this Belfast-based firm of central heating engineers is self-evident.

In the space of three years, HEAT has advanced from a ranking of 31st in 2006, to 10th last year, to this year ousting W L Gore & Associates as the Best Company to Work For. No mean feat this, as Gore had topped our survey for four years, from 2004 to 2007.

HEAT, an eaga company, specialise in the design, installation and maintenance of domestic central heating in the social housing market sector in the UK and Ireland and is renowned for both its technical innovation and approach to customer care.

The company installs over 5,000 new heating systems and carries out over 90,000 services annually.

HEAT have long been committed to employee wellbeing and has scored well in the awards for the last two years, coming 31 st and 10 th respectively, as well as winning the 2007 Ulster Television Employer of the Year Award.