Behind the scenes | A look at Nationwide's employee recognition journey

Nationwide is the world's largest building society and one of the most popular mortgage providers in the UK, employing over 18,000 people with 700 branches. Despite an excellent reputation as an employer, the company decided it was time to revamp its employee recognition strategy and make a truly personalised experience by consolidating separate systems and processes into a single platform.

Having launched the new system, ‘Appreciate,’ in February 2021, we caught up with Claire Clarke, Reward & Recognition Specialist at Nationwide, to look back at the initial stages of their journey and the key factors that made partnering with Reward Gateway a natural choice.

RG: What were the main challenges you were looking to solve at Nationwide before partnering with Reward Gateway and launching the Appreciate platform?

Claire: Showing appreciation for others and receiving recognition ourselves is part of what makes the culture at Nationwide so special. We have a large workforce spread across our branch network, as well as a significant proportion of colleagues that work remotely.

"Whilst our previous recognition programme was fairly robust and had a good long-term service proposition, it didn’t feel that dynamic or flexible, and we didn’t have the ability to personalise things at an individual level."