Nationwide is to carry out detailed
analysis of its employee and customer surveys and business performance figures
to find which factors affecting staff satisfaction have the biggest impact on
the bottom line.
Tony Houchen, senior manager for
personnel planning and development for Nationwide, said that in June the
results of this year’s Viewpoint employee satisfaction survey will be analysed
against the findings of a customer satisfaction survey and Nationwide’s 2000/1
business performance.
He told Personnel Today that the
building society planned to link the findings of the employee satisfaction
survey to customer satisfaction and bottom line business performance to find
out where to concentrate resources.
Houchen explained, “If we can focus
our efforts as an HR function on those areas which are most important for our
employees but also benefit our membership and business performance that is
going to give us the pay back.”
John Wrighthouse, head of personnel
planning and development for Nationwide, said the company also wants to
establish a database with ORC International, which carries out its employee
satisfaction surveys so that it can compare results with some of ORC’s other
clients.
“We are very keen to bench mark with
the best in class whoever they are,” he said.
Last year Nationwide analysed five
year’s worth of Viewpoint surveys to establish what Wrighthouse called the
Nationwide Genome.
“We wanted to find out issues make a
real difference to our employees and what makes Nationwide tick,” he added.
One of the main findings was that
base pay was more important to staff than benefits.
As a result Nationwide altered its
pay structure so that the length of time it took for staff to move from the
minimum level in a pay scale to the maximum level was reduced from between
seven and nine years to just three years.