Great colleagues but shifting culture and reduced benefits
Pros
I spent four years at Principality and worked with a lot of genuinely talented and caring people. Most colleagues wanted to do the right thing and there was a strong sense that the work could have a real positive impact for members. There were opportunities to work on meaningful projects and improve legacy systems, which made the role technically interesting and rewarding at times. The organisation has good people with strong intentions, and there is definitely potential for positive change.
Cons
Over the last year especially, there has been a noticeable cultural shift in how employees are viewed and engaged with. Leadership direction changing is understandable, but many changes felt introduced with limited consultation despite staff also being members of the society. The organisation increasingly feels corporate and politically driven, with heavy use of corporate language replacing genuine engagement. Employee voice feels reduced compared to when I joined, and decisions often appeared to be made based more on perception or feeling than operational reality or supporting data. Engineering teams faced significant bureaucracy and pushback when trying to improve systems or modernise ways of working. There was often an expectation to deliver ambitious timelines on top of legacy constraints, with out-of-hours (unsociable) work becoming normalised. Although time back was technically offered, workloads often made it difficult to actually take. Benefits have gradually reduced over time as well. Hybrid working flexibility changed, healthcare is subsidised rather than fully supported, mortgage-related benefits were removed, and bonuses felt difficult to reconcile with publicly reported performance and external spending priorities. For senior technical staff, there was also less autonomy than expected, which made it difficult to drive meaningful technical improvements even when there was willingness within teams to do so.