Taking total rewards online: Nationwide’s phased approach
| Published date | 01 May 2005 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14754390580000799 |
| Pages | 12-13 |
| Date | 01 May 2005 |
| Author | Paul Bissell |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
12 Volume 4 Issue 4 May/June 2005
REWARDS
,
Short case studies that demonstrate best practice in rewards
Taking total rewards online:
Nationwide’s phased approach
information to people to improve their
understanding – and therefore their
appreciation – of their reward package.
If you ask most people about their
current level of overall reward they will
generally say: a) they think they’re
worth more than they receive; and b)
they’re not actually sure how much they
receive altogether.
Moving to an online platform is one
way to help people understand their
package by pulling together lots of
different elements to form a cogent,
joined-up picture of what that package
looks like.
Secondly, but no less important, is
the cost and complexity issue. In terms
of cost, we asked ourselves if we could
provide rewards in a more efficient way
and get the same result. The answer
was yes, we can. Our old system was
labor intensive and inefficient. Benefits
are also becoming increasingly complex
in their nature and paper-based
administration systems, especially in an
organization as large as Nationwide, are
no longer adequate.
Treating employees as customers
We endeavor to apply the same values
to our employees as we apply to our
customers: we want them to have access
to the information they want when
they want it and in whatever form they
choose. It’s not easy to do this, but the
online platform is a significant step
forward for us. We want to make it easy
for employees to find out exactly what
it is they get from us in terms of
reward. We invest a significant amount
in them and we want them to be able
to see this value clearly.
The ability to provide consistent and
accessible information in a cost-efficient
way that also enables us to easily
introduce more complex benefits later
down the line were, in a nutshell, the
key drivers behind the change.
Off-the-shelf or unique?
If you go down this route there are two
approaches you can take. You can buy
an off-the-shelf product or, as we chose
to do, you can create your own. Cost is
a factor, but more importantly, we had
a clear vision of what we wanted and it
wasn’t encapsulated in any of the
ready-made packages we examined. It
was more logical for us to go through a
tendering process and work with our
two eventual partners, Vebnet and
Grass Roots to create Fruitful, our
unique online platform.
As we’ve gone through each stage of
development we bring employees in to
test the platform’s usability. Again, this
is something we also do for our
customers who, when possible, are
given the opportunity to look at and
test new products and systems before
they are launched.
M
any companies are facing the
challenge of how to gain
maximum impact from their
reward program while controlling the
resultant cost. Managing and
communicating reward in a holistic
manner is, without doubt, an area on
which companies will focus in the
coming years to demonstrate to
employees the full value of their reward
package. The challenge is how to make
this happen and then sustain change in
the long term.
For Nationwide, the fourth largest
mortgage lender in the UK, part of the
solution is a unique, integrated, online
benefits and rewards platform that will
give our 15,300 employees access to all
elements of their reward package in a
single website. We are launching the
new platform in stages during the
course of just over a year.
Drivers for change
The key reasons behind our shift from
paper-based to online reward delivery
fall into several different areas. Firstly,
communication: the provision of
Nationwide is the UK’s fourth largest
mortgage lender and seventh largest
retail banking, savings and lending
organization by asset size – in excess of
UK£100 billion. It employs 15,300 people.
NATIONWIDE
Paul Bissell, senior rewards manager at Nationwide Building Society, explains how a multiphased approach to
launching online rewards has already resulted in the company’s most successful flexible benefits enrollment.
© Melcrum Publishing Ltd. 2005 For more information visit www.melcrum.com or e-mail info@melcrum.com
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