What is the hiring process like at Nationwide Building Society?

Pros

There are no pros. I only stayed in my role at Nationwide for job security during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cons

Nationwide is one of the most toxic workplaces I have ever worked in. When applying for a role, on the job adverts, Nationwide explained how they pride themselves on their staff wellbeing and their career opportunities. This was not the case. Before starting, you will not receive a single email from your line manager/team, everything received will be automated. You will only find out who your manager is and the name of your team once you start. NW won’t specify the exact team you will work on during the interview, so that they can make your role ‘flexible’ and stick you wherever they want. The job is often insinuated to be ‘a 9-5 admin job’, but when you begin, you will end up being placed on the 24/7 telephony team. The office itself was very hostile, there was lots of gossiping and rumours going around the office, which made it feel like you were back at school. This was all passed off as ‘banter’ and was allowed to continue! SLT spoke down to their staff and there were many occasions where staff were mocked in front of other employees. In the pandemic, Nationwide forced ‘all staff’ to work from home, without carrying out a proper assessment of working conditions. ‘Everyone’ was forced to work from home for 4 months and those with slow internet connection or issues with WFH received lots of abuse for their ‘low productivity’. When people were finally allowed into the office again (NW locked most people’s employee passes, so they couldn’t physically enter the office, even if they had IT issues when WFH), It turns out that certain groups of people were allowed to continue working in the office (if you had the right connections, you could get favours like this) whilst other staff were left to struggle WFH, were wrongly punished for work performance and suffered with their mental health, which would have been completely avoidable if all employees were treated as equals. There is a lot of special treatment, it is very clicky and you will only be valued if your face fits. You are expected to work like a robot, you received warnings if you tried to suggest improvements and were told to stop creating more work. If you found anything out of the ordinary and escalated it, you would be removed from working on that team/function. It’s extremely contradictory to tell staff not to be proactive, but to state ‘proactivity’ as a required skill for promotions. I also believe that people were purposely restricted to one piece of work as a way for Nationwide to avoid giving pay rises and promotions. People with years of experience in the area are denied promotions/secondments because they don’t have ‘a variety of experience’ through no fault of their own. The worst thing being that promotions were handed to employees with little to no experience in the field of work, who were ‘helped’ by the hiring manager and often didn’t have to complete the interview process, as they were handed roles on a plate. Bullying was rife in Nationwide House. When you tried reporting this, you were shut down and the matter was brushed under the carpet. Multiple reports can be made about an employee (or a group of) and nothing will be done about it. Certain people can make these reports ‘go away’ and often these people are given rewards, to show that Nationwide likes to give second chances. Most people decided to find another job within the organisation, to move away from the poor working conditions in Financial Crime. However, as I said earlier, certain employees are quickly moved up the career ladder, these employees are normally the reason that people look to leave. Many people found that when they leave the department, the people they had issues with were also given jobs in their new team. As this seemed to be a common practice, a lot of people ended up having to turn down job offers, which blacklisted them for applying for promotions in the future. Towards the end of my time at Nationwide, almost half of the staff in the Financial Crime area had left, due to the way staff were being treated. Despite more senior positions now being open, these roles were not even advertised, they were given out to select individuals, which meant that experienced NW staff were being forgotten about yet again. As a way to keep staff, a ‘recruitment freeze’ was also added, which meant that anyone working in the department was not allowed to apply for internal vacancies, which was seen as a way to stop staff leaving. When you hand in your notice, it seems as though there is a script for line managers to follow. Myself and many other colleagues who had handed in their notices were told the exact same things when we tried to leave. We were called ‘silly’, made to feel guilty and had our shifts changed with no notice, so that employees were made to work additional night shifts as a ‘punishment’ for leaving. HR are also incompetent, calculating the incorrect holiday allowance when working out your final salary payment and also underpaying massively. However, Nationwide refuse to provide contact details for HR to resolve incorrect pay, so many employees have lost hundreds of pounds due to these errors. I would avoid working here, as there is no career progression, workplace bullying is rife and staff are mistreated from day one! It feels as though Nationwide would rather reward bad behaviour than acknowledge their hard working staff. It isn’t worth working 24/7 shifts, being mistreated by your colleagues/managers and carrying out data entry every day, all for £19,000 a year, with absolutely no pay/career progression.

Advice to Management

Managers need to advocate for their staff, in a big company like Nationwide, it is important that employees are valued! Jobs in FC are paid much better at other banks/companies, so NW need to treat their staff a lot better to make up for the entry level wages they are paying their qualified and experienced staff.

Pros

Steady company, relatively good policies sick pa etc., The specialist mortgage division has retained staff, other parts of Nationwide are now looking at redundancies. Woman as a rule are managers as often as men although not as many above the Operations manager mark. If I were starting out I would get my initial start here before moving onto companies where you can progress and flourish and be numerated better The work is not taxing mentally but repetitive

Cons

Very cliquey place, you're never promoted have to go through a points based competency interview process no matter how good you are at your job. Often you get to train the outside candidate that got the position you applied for. Extreme drinking culture after work, very youth based. Quite hard if you do not fit the norm of drinking or wanting to socialize with colleagues in management. Rewards are always unhealthy chocolates, sweets etc. or bottles of alcohol

Advice to Management

Treat everyone as fairly as your say you do in your HR blurbs, stop promoting only friends that you drink at the Slug and lettuce with. It is quite a lilywhite experience looking at at the office, your inclusivity is not actually implemented. The mortgage section of Nationwide is your cash cow, pay your workers accordingly

Pros

Great places to work wherever you are based. Flexible employer valuing work life balance. Good package and pension.

Cons

Bureaucratic Too many in middle management with no power to promote individuals Poor performance takes a lifetime to correct HR support is poor Too many side of desk conversations and not enough focus on productivity Antiquated hiring process and focusses on technical knowledge too much and not enough on people values!

Advice to Management

Have less people in middle management and give them some power to make decisions and trust those decisions - make it easier for them to promote their good people and avoid losing them!

Pros

Excellent work culture Good benefits Flexible working

Cons

recruitment process was a very lengthy one

Pros

-Generally most people are professional and easy to get along with -Focus on being a mutual

Cons

-Benefits are weak for a financial institution (and even large corporate) -Started to become brave with being one of the first organisations to say people could work anywhere but slowly guidance is being introduced moving away from that -Not fair with the way they recognise colleagues e.g. covid payments, cost of living payment only paid to people under 35k without any consideration of people's circumstances -Stakeholders can be undecisive, difficult and sometimes even rude to people trying to support their area -Too much focus on following a process than recognising staff e.g. inyernal recruitment process is outdated and people are treated as external candidates.

Pros

Good work-life balance. Remote working is very helpful. Can be flexible with hours if you request it.

Cons

The naming and shaming was a big surprise. So was the authoritarian leadership style, the lack of openness and the lack of inclusion of normal employees in any change process. The interview procedures really suck as well - actual performance does not weigh in hiring decisions - just the interview responses. Pay is below market rate.

Advice to Management

Take an interest in what the people beneath you do and who they are. Find out what the challenges of their jobs are - spend a day doing their job. If great people are doing good work, stop criticising them about the 2% they get wrong. Stop having meetings with more managers than employees - you don't need all those managers.

Pros

Loved working from home and getting on with what was needed.

Cons

Very immature in the UX design field. Those who progress play the corporate game and produce very little The killer was a new manager coming in like a bull in a China shop and choose to change my role in their first two weeks.

Pros

The branches are nice and have nice people working in them, supportive branch manager and new team leader in project work is really good. Good pension and good benefits.

Cons

Pay should be better for PBMs and especially for MRs. The salaries paid to Member Relationship Directors is outrageous, I would be surprised if our loyal members would agree to these salaries. Working from home, doing what exactly? The couple of branch visits a year the MRD is usually late so misses the morning meeting and leaves early!! Majority of the time not even “hello or “goodbye “ I had an MR who’s been with Nationwide one year ask me who she was!! Its outrageous and I really hope the new CEO looks at the structure and pay. The retail side of Nationwide is too too heavy with managers, even new MR’s asking what do they do!

Advice to Management

Review the need for both cluster managers and MRDs and ask the question what exactly are they filling their time doing at home? instead review the lower paid member facing salaries! Nationwide made the decision to remove PBMs who were actually helping members with products and services and kept roles where their is zero contribution to members. I really hope the new CEO listens and reviews the structure.

Pros

Maternity leave, pension, benefits, flexible working

Cons

Recruitment freeze on all non-branch roles, no open communication as to why.

Advice to Management

Stay flexible, be open and honest