Care-full people change

To deliver change, first and foremost, we are committed to upskilling our people and empowering leaders, with the support of subject matter experts to provide guidance, oversight, and governance.

We approach change with a strong ethic of care and transparency. We ensure colleagues are treated with kindness, are positively engaged, feel a sense of fairness, and are treated with respect.

We achieve this by:

• being open and honest with our colleagues about each stage of the people change process they will go through
• having confident leaders who can manage their own business-led change programmes
• having a redeployment process in place for all impacted colleagues – where a colleague can take up a different role in the company, often as an alternative to redundancy
• ensuring change is inclusive and keeps diversity and wellbeing at the heart of our approach and decision-making
• engaging in the consultation process with both our colleagues and the Nationwide Group Staff Union (NGSU) early in the process.

All leaders are encouraged to complete online learning and face to face training so they can lead, support, and embed changes effectively.

Whenever a change programme takes place, leaders are expected to deliver core messages about the change in person, ideally face to face or if not, remotely. All colleagues are encouraged to ask questions openly or privately and can raise concerns throughout the change process. They also have access to an external employee care provider who can offer independent counsel and care.

Colleagues have access to our Job Security and Redundancy Policy, which is in place to provide information on what colleagues can expect to happen if their role is at risk of redundancy. The policy explains the consultation process and gives guidance on how they may be affected by selection, redeployment, or redundancy.

To minimise the impact on our colleagues we follow a comprehensive process of providing access to redeployment and reskilling opportunities as alternatives to redundancy in the first instance. Where possible, people’s preferences may also be sought, however when redundancy is the necessary outcome, we ensure our people are treated with dignity and respect as they leave the Society.

Where colleagues have a redeployment option, we are committed to invest in their learning to help provide new opportunities to build skills for the future within the Society. We also work towards providing alternative career pathways and choices. We are committed to build on our permanent colleague base to reduce our reliance on external or temporary resource.

Whilst it’s important that we follow processes to meet our external and legal obligations, we do this in a human centred way, never losing sight of the people involved. We understand that leaving the Society can be an important milestone for people and therefore we ensure that we do this in a professional and caring way.

Our approach to a people change programme means:

• Any proposals must be designed responsibly with an ethic of care being front of mind.
• Joint consultation with our people aims to ensure our colleagues are engaged, with diverse views and opinions heard and considered.
• Leaders are equipped to drive and embed the people change and they can engage and communicate with their people throughout the process.
• The people change is appropriately resourced and supported with regular touch points to determine how well the change is landing.

Throughout the change programme, we track and measure colleague sentiment using our People Questionnaire to review our colleagues’ response to change, how our leaders are affecting change, and it facilitates how we measure the impact of the change on our inclusion and diversity profile.

By delivering change responsibly and as intended, we hope our colleagues will feel consulted and supported.