Learning & development

Learning and development is key to the success of Nationwide and to our employees' career progression and we continued to invest significantly. We have doubled the amount of training provided to our employees over the last two years. We continue to benchmark ourselves against Investors in People (IIP), which provides a framework for continuous improvement of policies and strategies.

All employees have access to a range of development options, from e-learning to face-to-face courses. We have a full induction programme for new recruits. As part of the Nationwide-Portman merger preparations, we prioritised a comprehensive programme for incoming employees, including job shadowing and access to intranet training.

We encourage professional development to improve our business and to benefit our employees and we sponsor a number of employees each year to qualify for NVQs, degrees, management and financial services disciplines.

In the fight against financial crime, well-trained and vigilant employees are one of the first lines of defence and form a key part of our strategy, supported by leading-edge technology and procedures. All employees complete training on fraud prevention and we regularly raise awareness so they can recognise and deal with prevalent types of fraudulent attack. Fraud is one of the areas covered in our confidential whistleblowing procedure, and we encourage employees to remain vigilant and report all instances.

This year we established a new learning and development model to meet the needs of an enlarged Society and to ensure effective and cost-efficient training delivery. In 2006/07 we exceeded our target to deliver over 48,000 individual days of training to our employees, delivering 48,705 overall. In 2007/08 we aim to deliver 60,000 internal training days (an average of three course-based training days per employee).