Coronavirus update following the Prime Minister’s announcement

Statement from the Society on 11th May:

Following the Prime Minister’s announcement last night, we wanted to provide an update. In short, nothing changes for Nationwide in the way we’re working and how we’re responding to the coronavirus. If you can continue working from home, please do so. The safety and wellbeing of our people and members is our priority, demonstrated through the measures we’ve put in place in our branches and offices for our colleagues who need to be there.

Boris Johnson announced the government’s roadmap to reopening society, and that more detail on this conditional plan will be discussed in Parliament this week. We will be following this closely, as well as understanding any new guidance for employers on key workers and any further safety measures.

All government advice is that the lockdown will be eased gradually over the coming months, and so they’re continuing to ask people to:
• Stay at home as much as possible
• Work from home if you can
• Limit contact with others
• Keep your distance from other people, two metres apart where possible
• Wash your hands regularly.

As Joe mentioned in his email on Thursday, we’ve already implemented a great deal of measures to protect colleagues. We’re asking everyone to continue working as they have over the last few weeks, so we can implement any changes slowly and in the right way.
We’ve carried out a great deal of work to understand the maximum capacity of all our buildings, and won’t breach those levels. In some buildings we’re already at capacity so we need to help our teams work through any return to the office, and for most people this will not be for some time. Our buildings currently look and feel very different as we have introduced very stringent social distancing measures, and we’ll continue to review these to make sure they are appropriate and keep our people safe.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll need to continue helping as many of our teams work from home as possible. We’ll also have to gather the right information on employees needs and challenges so that any return to the workplace can be managed in an organised, prioritised and fair way. We should also take the time to think about our own wellbeing during such a challenging time.

Thanks for your continued patience and support. We’ll update this story with any more information as it evolves.