Sky staff get their just rewards with a two-day festival

The two-day event was rolled out last month in England, with a Scottish equivalent due to take place in September.

Activities at Skyfest London ranged from performances by the English National Ballet to allowing staff to stand on the ‘fourth plinth' in Trafalgar Square. The event last month in London also broke the Guinness world record for the largest game of Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, with 1,252 participants.

Over-18s events included performances by Will Young, Bjorn Again, DJ Seb Fontaine and comedy from Frankie Boyle as well as appearances by stars of the BBC television series, Strictly Come Dancing.

Dev Raval, director of reward at Sky, said: "Community engagement is very important to us as a business. It is part of what we do. Skyfest is a way of bringing our values to life by directly involving our charity partners and giving our employees an opportunity to find out about key projects first-hand. We hope they will be inspired to take further action themselves.

"At the same time the event is designed to be great entertainment and enhance our employee reward package. In a challenging marketplace, we continue to perform and we want our people to share in our success. It's a highly creative way of securing employee engagement."

The initiative follows all permanent staff members being given 100 free shares in January.

The events were organised by management agency The Rouge Partnership.