Our culture

We want to help our people thrive at work whilst developing rewarding careers, ensuring they feel supported and valued. We’re committed to building an inclusive environment that encourages high performance - driven by a collective purpose.

Our strategy and customer first behaviours form our blueprint for a modern mutual. They shape our culture and inform everything we do, enabling us to deliver on our purpose by putting customers and members at the heart of how we work together at Nationwide.

These are our customer first behaviours and what they mean:

Be honest and direct with good intent and say what needs to be said in the room. It’s also about being clear, precise, and using language that we and, importantly, our customers and members can understand.

Aim high and constantly look for better in how we work together and serve our customers and members.

Prioritise what will have the greatest impact, be decisive and take accountability for delivering on our end-to-end outcome.

We measure our culture and learn about colleague experiences through regular surveys. They provide an opportunity for everyone to share their views and feedback in real-time. The surveys cover what it is like to work at Nationwide, whether customer first behaviours are demonstrated, and how we're delivering against our strategy.

In April 2023, our colleague engagement, of 79%, was 8% points above the financial services benchmark (research provided by Ipsos Karian and Box). The highest scores of the survey relate to colleague enjoyment and feeling a connection to Nationwide’s purpose.

As well as these surveys we use the following forums to gather insight:

• employee networks
• Nationwide Group Staff Union (NGSU)
• colleague Talkbacks
• feedback at hybrid events with Executive and Non-Executive Directors (covering topics like: our new strategy, senior leadership introductions and organisational structure changes).

Together, these conversations provide a broader understanding of colleague sentiment and views.

We also analyse our core people measures, including diversity, attrition and absence to provide a more complete view and understanding of Nationwide’s culture.

Our Board and Executive Committee regularly discuss the outputs of our surveys and colleague feedback to understand what our colleagues really value. This in turn helps to inform and shape strategic decisions and initiatives that drive meaningful change within the Society. We have an independent nominated non-executive director with responsibility for developing an understanding of colleague views and bringing insight to the Board.

We promote openness, honesty and transparency. And we want our colleagues to speak up whenever they witness or experience anything that doesn’t match our values. We encourage our colleagues to raise any concerns through their management, but for those who wish to remain anonymous, or prefer not to raise the matter with their manager, we have a well-established and confidential whistleblowing process.