What is the hiring process like at Nationwide Building Society?

Great place to build a pension - company contribution is generous and edges a lot of similar institutions. Some wonderful, talented, and compassionate colleagues. Good selection of benefits and a decent work/life balance.

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.

Nationwide wring their hands over their hiring process with obvious results. Management are friendly, considerate and approachable, even at higher levels. There is very little clique-forming and cross-departmental cooperation was always easy and encouraged.

There's a tendency for the business to take itself a little too seriously, while not actually fulfilling the goals it sets for its own employees. For example, I've seen unbelievable wastage at my time with the Society. Both of time and literally of money. At the same time, they emphasise that every customer (or, "member") is a stakeholder and that we need to spend our members' money conservatively. I've been encouraged to increase compensation beyond what would normally be considered reasonable, just to avoid a FOS referral fee. Kind of a 'leave your ethics at the door' situation.

Pension is good if you increase personal contribution.

Engineers have no involvement in design, planning or testing but are expected to met ridiculous deadlines. Date Driven Development. No promotions - if you go above and beyond your level and constantly delivered there is no reward. Often made more frustrating as they'll spin up a new team full off-shore partners and it will consisting multiple higher roles. Offshore partners are below the required level, you will often have to babysit what they do and triple check it whilst trying to down your own work. No culture of innovation, suggestions for process improvements are ignored as they haven't came from a senior management. Highest Paid Persons Opinion is always the final decision. Projects described as "agile" but are waterfall. No ambition to use CICD. Thousands or repetitive tasks not automated to keep offshore partners around. No workalike balance. Often expected to met deadlines resulting weekend work. On call compensation is not worth the hassle. Mindset is old fashioned and standards around security, quality and delivering for the members are overlooked because for the cheaper option.

Most colleagues are pleasant. Pension good. Facilities good.

Constant process changes, senior management trying to squeeze efficiencies out of a dwindling workforce, many angry and aggressive members to face off to. Every minute watched. Constantly chased and monitored. Small process errors seen as devastating whilst colleagues making poor decisions often overlooked. Weekends and late shifts.

- Great pension contribution. - Contracted to 35 hours a week. - Generally surrounded by decent employees who are knowledgeable and want to do their best. - Good company discounts and training available. - Understanding about sickness/compassionate leave etc.

- Lack of work and/or boring work. - Huge amounts of unnecessary process for change. - Old and poorly maintained hardware for our on premise environments. - Heavy use of 3rd party resource that most of the time takes longer to baby sit than help us. - Constant process and people change which is now super boring and no one cares.

- Meaningful work, felt like I was making a difference and adding value. - Most people had genuine belief in and were invested in making the business successful. - Extremely generous pension scheme, paternity/maternity benefits.

- Pay was below average for role. - Very difficult to get approvals or significant changes made quickly. - A lot of nepotism or internal recruitment where applicants are predecided. Often meant a lot of wasted time on predecided outcomes.

Pension, work hours and colleagues

Basically they are turning into a bank in all but name. The senior Leadership team outside my branch use language like you are 16 years old and their attitude is like its 1980 again. "Do as I say, don't do what I do." The branches have all the workload while it seems the "Auditors" just have the one job to do. This month the modernisation of passbooks has created a huge footfall to branch, creating longer wait times. The message is to talk to our nicer, known customers to ask them to give 5 out 5 as it matters to me specifically, rather than look at a 10 to 20% decline and accept that the timing was wrong.

People Pension Can’t think of anything else as benefits been reduced

No clear directions from the top Ever changing and chaotic working priorities Decision made by new management without understanding impact New ads are not the ethos of what NBS was built on. No promoting the good we deliver to members v too much negative of other banks