Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/182340
Cover Story Competitive Advantage An on-site team of specialists guided the alignment of Nationwide's contingent and permanent workforce, resulting in reduced costs and increased efficiency. By Russ Banham WHY ENGAGEMENT MATTERS Engaged employees positively affect corporate performance outcomes, according to a recent meta-analysis of 1.4 million employees by Gallup, a global research organization and consultancy. The firm's 2013 study indicates that engaged employees result in the following organizational benefits: • Following the crisis of 2008, many financial organizations confronted a dire reality—a substantial dearth of specific skill sets to execute complex and rapidly developing regulatory demands. A fluctuating market that percolated the previous six years now boiled over, as HR departments ransacked the globe for the needed proficiencies. Recruiting this talent became a strategic imperative for many enterprises, given the competition for skills in short supply and the growing global demand. This was the case whether the human capital was deployed on a fulltime or contingent basis. Few companies would disagree that having the right people in the right jobs is the most vital business asset—by far. Nationwide Building Society in Swindon, England, the world's largest building society, the second-largest savings provider and a top-three provider of mortgages in the U.K., would concur with this assessment. Eighty percent of Nationwide's workforce is permanent full-time staff. The remainder is comprised of the high-level skill sets that many other financial services organizations were competing for—IT project managers, software developers, and engineers, not to mention temporary workers. "We often need to bring in expertise for system upgrades, and we need these skills on a flexible basis," explains Robert Aldrich, Nationwide HR director. "In the past, we'd be deluged by outside recruiters sending us resumes for people who would come here for a week to a couple years. For example, if we launched a big campaign involving attractive savings rates, we might need to build a customer support staff for three months." 37 percent lower absenteeism • 25 percent lower turnover (in high-turnover organizations) • 65 percent lower turnover (in low-turnover organizations) • 28 percent less shrinkage • 48 percent fewer safety incidents • 41 percent fewer patient safety incidents • 41 percent fewer quality incidents (defects) • 10 percent higher customer metrics • 21 percent higher productivity • 22 percent higher profitability SEPTEMBER 2013 | www.hrotoday.com [11]