Culture Specialist

at  Nationwide

This is an exciting opportunity to work in the Performance, Reward and Culture team within our People Function. We design and deliver compelling colleague propositions which help make us a great place to work. Together, our efforts will drive a high performing culture, ensure people want to stay with us and strengthen a strong and exciting employer brand to attract new talent.
At the heart of this strategy and insight are our 17 million customers, who are at the forefront of every decision we make as a business. Every role, no matter its accountabilities, is customer focused.
The Culture Specialist will lead the day-to-day execution of the Organisational Culture Strategy. Specialists are responsible for the delivery of accurate and realistic assessment of the current organisational culture based on employee sentiment, deep understanding of employee engagement and current/future impact of external demographic trends.
At Nationwide we offer hybrid working wherever possible. More rewarding relationships are supported through our hybrid approach, bringing colleagues together across our UK wide estate, whilst also supporting generous access to home working. We value our time in the office to solve problems, to learn, and to feel connected.
With many of the team located at our Swindon office, we’re keen to find someone who can spend at least two days a week in the office. However, we’re willing to consider candidates from across the UK to find the right person and if you’re not based in Swindon we would still expect you to attend this office on a minimum monthly basis for meetings and collaboration sessions.
If your application is successful, your hiring manager will provide further details on how this works. You can also find out more about our approach to hybrid working here.
If we receive a high volume of relevant applications, we may close the advert earlier than the advertised date, so please apply as soon as you can.

ABOUT YOU

• Track record of gathering and analysing data to identify cultural strengths, areas for improvement and make informed decisions about cultural interventions.
• Experienced within change management, proven ability to develop and implement plans, facilitate communication, collaboration and manage resistance to change
• Possess strong communication and interpersonal skills on written and verbal platforms to explain desired cultural changes to employees at all levels, build relationships and engage stakeholders in the change process.
• Proven ability to inspire, guide and motivate a team to deliver impactful work at pace that is underpinned by credible data and insight while being able to manage third party and internal relationships to gather, validate and challenge cultural data points.
• Ability to work with ambiguity and identify solutions for complex problems to support detailed proposals.
• Own a strong understanding and appreciation of different cultures within and outside of the organisation. Able to demonstrate ability to understand cultural nuances and adapt strategies/approach accordingly.

Our Customer First behaviours are all about putting customers and members at the heart of how we work together. You can strengthen your application by showing the behaviours that resonate with you, and how you might have already demonstrated these.

• Say it straight - This is about being honest and direct with good intent and saying what needs to be said in the room. It’s also about being clear, precise, and using language that we and, importantly, our customers and members can understand.
• Push for better - This is about aiming high and constantly looking for better in how we work together and serve our customers and members.
• Get it done - This is about prioritising what will have the greatest impact, being decisive and taking accountability for delivering on the end-to-end outcome.

We know applying for jobs can sometimes feel like you’re sending an application into a black hole. We review each application individually. So, it’s a good idea to call out your most relevant experience on your application to give yourself the best chance.

A key accountability will be to drive the cultural shifts required for the Society to achieve its strategic ambition. To provide SME cultural insight, data analytics skills and lead virtual and in person teams.
Other core accountabilities will include to understanding colleague engagement on a regular basis while measuring how the Society’s culture is changing over time, through deep cultural assessment and analysis and creating targeted insights from a broad range of data, external trends and internal proof points to drive tangible business outcomes.
You will take a broad range of data points and feedback to create compelling insights enabling leaders to make data driven decisions and take targeted actions while managing / leading projects and specific action plans to drive change, build effective working relationships and workforce solutions across Society, delivering performance improvement and innovation.
Exceptional stakeholder management skills will be required for this role. You will provide status updates and communicate blockers or issues to the Head of Organisational Culture while providing specialist guidance/input to Director of Performance, Reward and Culture where you will work across this team to contribute to and deliver team outcomes.
You will work with People Leads and Culture Champions to gain qualitative data, support action planning and interventions and support leaders with cultural assessment and targeted interventions.
Establish and maintain governance and control mechanisms, manage team resources effectively, mitigate risks, promote accountability and provide a framework for decision making for the team.