Customer Communications Squad Lead

Customer Communications Squad Lead

Location: Bournemouth, Swindon or London

Salary: From £75,000 per annum

Are you a natural leader, with a passion for creating and delivering the very best customer communications? Do you understand the crucial role that communications play in the moments that matter to our customers? Do you know how to make sure processes are robust and efficient but also understand how to develop a continual improvement mindset within a team?

In the Customer Communications team in MT&O, we write, design, and produce millions of essential communications for our customers each year. The communications we manage are often called legal, regulatory and mandatory communications. These are the critical communications that we must send to our customers to help them manage their accounts, day-to-day, and to make good financial decisions.

We put customers at the heart of everything we do. And we make sure the customer journeys are clear and optimised.

Our vision is for all of our communications is to be empathetic and easily understood by customers. We’ve made a great start on our journey to achieve our vision, using the very best copy, design and behavioural science.

And we now need additional, like-minded communications experts to join us as we build our team.

The Customer Communications team is set up in squads. We have four squads, each with seven colleagues, managed by a Squad Manager. The squads work closely with the business areas to understand and challenge communication briefs and then design the best customer experience and communications.

These communications are delivered traditionally through mailings and digitally through email and our new online experience (app and online servicing).

We copywrite all of our communications, design them, test them where necessary, and work with our comms development and distribution partners to produce and send them. The communications that we produce are inspired by customer insight, behavioural science and align to the Nationwide Communication Standards.

At Nationwide we offer hybrid working wherever possible. More rewarding relationships are supported through our hybrid approach, bringing colleagues together across our UK wide estate, whilst also supporting generous access to home working. We value our time in the office to solve problems, to learn, and to feel connected.

For this job you\’ll spend at least two days per week, or if part time you\’ll spend 40% of your working time, based at either our Swindon, London or Bournemouth office. If your application is successful, your hiring manager will provide further details on how this works. You can also find out more about our approach to hybrid working here.

If we receive a high volume of relevant applications, we may close the advert earlier than the advertised date, so please apply as soon as you can.

What you’ll be doing

The Squad Lead is a new and senior role, reporting to the Head of Department and working closely with the other Squad Lead in the team. It’s a great opportunity to influence, and to play a key role in delivering Nationwide’s ambition of being a modern mutual and a ‘challenger’ to the big banks.

You will be representing CB&E and MT&O at senior levels and working with key colleagues based both internally and externally.

A particular area of focus for you will be the enablement of communications excellence. To achieve this, you will work closely with colleagues from across the Society and our creative, design and strategic agencies to improve and influence the design of data and technology to support enhanced customer communication experiences.

Day to day, you will lead the end-to-end delivery of two squads, making sure that communication and ways of working is seamless and collaborative between squad managers, communication consultants, artworkers, delivery consultants and assistants.

As a senior leader within MT&O, you will play a key role as both role model and coach, creating a positive squad mentality and building a culture of continuous improvement.

About you

• Experience working with legal, mandatory and regulatory communications
• Have a positive, continual improvement mindset
• Be a strong people manager with great leadership skills (Team size of up to 14 including managers)
• Thrive on change, have natural resilience, and not be fazed by last-minute changing requirements
• Experience translating the complex into simple, including the delivery of excellent customer journeys
• Set high standards, accepting nothing less than the best customer experience
• Have a strong track record of delivery and success.
• Financial services experience

Our Customer First behaviours are all about putting customers and members at the heart of how we work together. You can strengthen your application by showing the behaviours that resonate with you, and how you might have already demonstrated these.

• Say it straight – This is about being honest and direct with good intent and saying what needs to be said in the room. It’s also about being clear, precise, and using language that we and, importantly, our customers and members can understand.
• Push for better – This is about aiming high and constantly looking for better in how we work together and serve our customers and members.
• Get it done – This is about prioritising what will have the greatest impact, being decisive and taking accountability for delivering on the end-to-end outcome.

We know applying for jobs can sometimes feel like you’re sending an application into a black hole.

We review each application individually. So, it’s a good idea to call out your most relevant experience on your application to give yourself the best chance.

The extras you’ll get

There are all sorts of employee benefits available at Nationwide, including:

• A personal pension – if you put in 7% of your salary, we’ll top up by a further 16%
• Up to 2 days of paid volunteering a year
• Life assurance worth 8x your salary
• A great selection of additional benefits through our salary sacrifice scheme
• Wellhub – Access to a range of free and paid options for health and wellness.
• Access to an annual performance related bonus
• Access to training to help you develop and progress your career
• 30 days holiday, pro rata
• Individual healthcare cover

What makes us different

Nationwide is the world’s largest building society. With over 15 million customers, we have a relationship with almost a quarter of the UK’s population. We’ve got the scale to compete with the big banks, but we’re not a bank.

As a building society, we’re owned by our members – that’s our customers who have their current account, mortgage or savings with us. It means we can do things differently to deliver our Purpose – Banking – but fairer, more rewarding, and for the good of society.

When you work at Nationwide, you can experience that difference for yourself. You’ll be part of a high-performing, purpose-driven organisation that offers rewarding career experiences and a highly competitive range of benefits to match. You’ll also be joining us at an important time as we seek to reach more and more people in the UK. We want everyone in the UK to know that they don’t have to bank with a bank. They can choose a modern mutual instead.