Meet the Winner: Best Employee Engagement Team

Following the 2024 Engage Awards, we’ve had the privilege of sitting down with our winners to uncover the stories behind their award-winning strategies. Our ‘Meet the Winners’ series aims to provide valuable insights into crafting a winning entry while inspiring success and innovation across the industry.

Today we meet Nationwide, who won the highly sought after ‘Best Employee Engagement Team’ award.

1. Congratulations on your Engage Awards win! Can you tell us a little bit more about the project that shaped your entry?

Thank you! Our entry focused on numerous engagements across the year to build colleague understanding of our strategy and drive advocacy. We were pleased with the cultural momentum built and the lasting impact they had on our colleagues.

2. What motivated you to pursue this initiative, and why do you think it stood out?

Since launching our Blueprint, we’ve invested heavily in building colleague understanding, belief, motivation and commitment. This ranged from a continuous drumbeat of communications, deepening colleague understanding over time, through to flagship events designed to inspire and galvanise teams around a shared purpose.

The positive impact of this investment is reflected in an increase across all the measures in our advocacy scale, and strong performance metrics. For example:

1. Key engagements attended over 50,700 times. On average 98% enjoyed the events.
2. Colleague index sits above the high performing benchmark.
3. 1.3 million intranet hits every 30 days (+27% vs 2023) with record-breaking readership scores across articles in 2024.

Our nomination was data-driven and we believe that helped us to stand out, as we were able to demonstrate the impact of our work with a level of tangibility and objectivity.

3. What were the biggest challenges you faced during this journey, and how were they overcome?

The team was newly formed in September 2023, with new leadership and an elevated remit. Within the first few months, we were tasked with launching the most significant brand refresh Nationwide had seen in 30 years. This presented a huge opportunity for the team, but came with challenge. To deliver this successfully, we adopted a ‘one team’ mindset, leveraging individual strengths and experience across disciplines, to ensure we were all pulling in the same direction. Having such a big win under our belts early on helped to build confidence and momentum.

4. How has this initiative impacted employees?

1. Increased colleague understanding of our Blueprint (+21.1%) and the role they play to deliver it (+20.5%), uniting colleagues behind a shared purpose.
2. Celebrated our colleagues who have gone above and beyond – in turn, recognising and reinforcing organisational behaviours.
3. Raised awareness and funds for charity partners by hosting events in collaboration with our Social Impact team.
4. By communicating product launches and celebrating key customer moments internally, we have helped to drive a customer first mindset and increased colleague advocacy.

5. What does winning this award mean to everyone at NATIONWIDE?

We engage 23,000 colleagues daily, so the impact of our communications is far-reaching and plays an integral role in the success of our strategy. It has further bolstered our reputation, credibility and trust.

6. What advice would you give to other companies striving for similar success?

• Regularly survey colleagues to understand their needs, feedback and concerns – It’s key to show you’ve listened and responded to feedback.  
• External research – Explore external engagement trends. Research what other organisations across differing industries are doing well and why, and how this can be applied to what your team do.
• Be data driven and measure impact – Regularly measure performance, analyse the data and adjust your priorities in accordance.
• Get creative – Protect and dedicate time for your team to experiment and innovate with new ways to engage colleagues.
• Continuous improvement – Inevitably teams will come across challenges, but taking time to reflect on what went well, what didn’t, and lessons learned, ensures continuous improvement.

To view all of the our 2024 winners, visit our website.

To find out more about the Engage Awards programme, click here.