Nationwide building society is perhaps typical of many organisations that are essentially admin-driven — it employs mostly women but is very much run by men. Of its 15,000 employees, 80 per cent are female, says Jeremy del Strother, the divisional director for personnel and development. However, the further up the ranks you go, the more female representation falls away.
While 50 per cent of branch managers are women, only 20 per cent are senior executives, and out of 17 people with the word “director” in their job title, not one is a woman. On the board of 12, two are women — both non-executive directors.
Del Strother wants to change this and work towards a target where every shortlist has 50 per cent women. “I am very opposed to any idea of positive discrimination,” he says, “but I am keen to remedy past wrongs.” To that end women are given greater access to training and mentoring and are encouraged to apply for jobs internally.
But perhaps most impressive are Nationwide’s genuinely flexible working practices, available to all.
The crucial point is that while they are family-friendly, only time will tell if they actually help more women to break through the glass ceiling.
Advertisement
The options include term-time only working, career breaks of three or six months or a year, job-sharing, working condensed hours, going part-time and working from home.Of course, the benefits are not just to the staff: Nationwide’s reputation as an employer is such that it receives 25,000 unsolicited job applications a year. It also hangs on to its staff, with a turnover of just 8 per cent per year, compared with 14 per c ent in the financial services sector as a whole.
Nationwide recruits 20 graduates a year and in the past five has lost only one. Retaining staff is particularly important in places such as Swindon, where Nationwide has its headquarters and where there is unemployment of just 1 per cent.
Several reasons keep people with an employer, says del Strother: