This is Deloitte’s year in the Accountancy Age Awards. It won this year’s Global Firm of the Year and chairman John Connolly has been voted by our readers as the 2008 Accountancy Age Personality of the Year. Now, on top of those honours, the firm’s employees and our readers have voted Deloitte Employer of the Year.

A reading of the voters’ comments reveal a staff body impressed by the firm’s commitment to quality, its focus on sustainability, its ability to create a sense of belonging and its concentration on maintaining a tolerable work-life balance for its staff.

Generosity was not far behind either. When Deloitte announced it had reached its self imposed target of £2bn in revenues for this year, every staff member benefited, even in the post room, as one employee said.

The firm’s target clearly gives its staff a sense of something significant happening at Deloitte, that it is ambitious and growing. The target is also a clear indication of the firm’s ambition to be the biggest in the UK.

Last year, Deloitte was ranked sixth in the Sunday Times Best Big Companies to Work For survey and internal polls have shown that 89% of its staff believe the firm is client focused and 82% are proud to tell people where they work.

But to get a real sense of how Deloitte employees feel about the firm, it’s worth reading the comments they made in filling in the Accountancy Age questionnaire.

‘They have a passion for their people,’ wrote one, while another said Deloitte was: ‘A great place to work, with fantastic opportunities to learn, develop and gain valuable experience. Very competitive benefits and real opportunities to achieve and be recognised/rewarded for what you do.’ A third said it was a ‘true meritocracy?’