The winners of the TD 2000 awards were announced on Tuesday evening at the Training Solutions event. The awards were launched for the first time earlier this year by Training magazine and the Industrial Society to highlight best practice in company training departments and to 'increase awareness of running training like a business'.

Three finalists were picked from a shortlist of twelve: TGI Friday's, Provident Insurance Plc and Barclays Small Business Banking.

Commenting on the three finalists, judges Paul Kearns (an expert in the field of evaluation) and Nigel Crouch (from the DTI's Innovation Unit) said they were impressed with Barclay's focus on culture change and the rigour of their evaluation processes. TGI Friday's provided the judges with excellent hospitality, as might be expected, but they were particularly interested in the company's emphasis on keeping training fun, and linking training in to customer segmentation so that customers are handled according to their needs.

The eventual winners, Provident Insurance, impressed the judges with their commitment to training at all levels, which includes a 15 percent time component built into employees work schedules for training - this is monitored to make sure it takes place by managers.

Will Hutton, chief executive of the Industrial Society, was due to present the awards but got stuck in traffic - he did however turn up later.

Joint creator of the awards Andrew Rogers of Training magazine said that the winners were 'audibly thrilled' at the result!