Pros
Unique company culture with a strong sense of community across the workforce that you won't find anywhere else: people take pride in the company and the service it provies.
Respectable benefits, although some only kick in at senior levels, for example private healthcare. Good holiday entitlement.
Incredible range of roles and career disciplines.
Excellent employee support network for disabled colleagues, with networks for BAME, LGBQT+, and Women in STEM.
Monthly Q&A sessions with the CEO where any member of staff can question Heidi and her directors on any topic.
Highly people-focused in certain areas with significant levels of loyalty and goodwill for both the company and the good managers.
World-class apprenticeship and graduate opportunites, with a great focus on early careers for school leavers.
CKI ownership has provided stability and helped secure increased investment for infrastructure projects.
Flexible approach to hybrid working following the Covid pandemic that works well for majority of teams, although see my comments in 'Cons'.
Industry-leading approach to H&S.
Cons
The rapid increase in headcount to support the current investment period has seen people join who don't understand the value of the NWG company culture, which is having a negative impact across certain teams.
Inexperienced Directors who value public image and perception rather than the people in their teams, which is driving the wrong behaviour. Challenging their behaviour is difficult and can be career-limiting, with senior leaders (like myself), expected to be "on-brand" all of the time with no dissent allowed. The fear of retaliation for challenging poor leadership is strong, even up to L2 level.
For Personal Contract holders, the bonus system is unclear and needs reviewed.
Head office at Pity Me is 50yrs old with not enough space to fit all the teams in, even with hybrid working.
Some leaders and team managers struggle with hybrid and flexible working, believeing that their teams need to be in the office despite growing evidence that this impacts productivity and staff morale.
Growing fear that there will be significant redundancies in certain directorates, such as the HR team, to reduce the headcount and meet efficiency targets.
Challenging for people to move sideways and gain experience without taking a drop in salary. HR team at the most senior levels is very inflexible on this, preferring the easy "this is policy" approach instead of doing the right thing.
Very difficult to get new roles approved with multiple people wanting their say.
Facilities for women on some of our operational sites are either inadequate or non-existent, while the project to address this isn't delivering fast enough.
We claim that we're happy to learn from mistakes, however, the reality is that we still have a strong blame culture when things go wrong all the way up to Director level (not all Directors though). This creates a culture of fear and covering up of mistakes in some areas.
