Good enough to ride the gravy train, not to build a career - Anonymous employee Nationwide Building Society Employee Review

Nationwide's new leadership is committed to regressing the society's ways of working and talent pool. From contractor-first resourcing models to the new hybrid working policy, decisions are being taken and made referencing vague studies around colleague loneliness when no robust engagement has been conducted with NBS staff to ask us what we want and how we want to connect with our teams. The lack of referenced data shared with us speaks volumes. Arbitrary rules cost staff time and money to sit in an office and take Teams calls they could do at home. The same "the hybrid policy is in line with industry standards" line is parroted again and again, completely ignoring the fact that almost everyone hired in the last few years were recruited on the commitment that the organisation would permit them to work from anywhere, and many teams who can are already connecting in a reasonable and appropriate manner (e.g. around the demands of the work, not a mandated number of hours). Because the recruitment policy has also changed, this restricts our talent pool back to the south of England and tightens the noose where our pay grades are not up to snuff. Those who are remote from their teams have had their career progression cut off at the knees as we would have to relocate to progress into different roles within the society. If I were being cynical, I might speculate that the choice to announce the policy change off the back of hundreds of people being put at risk of redundancy isn't coincidental. It's really sad, because there's a lot of great people at NBS and some really interesting problems to solve. But if they're so insistent on trying to operate like one of the big banks, I think I'd rather hop to one of the big banks and get paid more for the same working conditions.