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Background
Zopa Bank, a fast-growing hybrid digital bank, is committed to creating an excellent employee experience, leading to excellent customer service with a market-leading NPS score of 83. The company recognises that an organisation’s success relies heavily on the wellbeing of its workforce, especially during turbulent moments such as the cost-of-living crisis. Therefore, Zopa Bank’s priority to be the ‘Customer Champion’ is also highly reliant on it being the champion for its employees, creating an environment that cultivates physical, mental and financial wellness.
Approach
In 2022, Zopa Bank invested in a new People Experience function. This team’s role is to create an exceptional employee experience. It designed and implemented a complete overhaul of benefits, which meant that the people proposition was instantly more distinguishable in the market, including a 120-day work from abroad benefit introduced to enable Zopians to spend more time with their loved ones post-pandemic, and cost-of-living actions like raising the entry-level wage to 16.8% above London Living Wage and giving a cost of living crisis winter bonus to all those on less than £50k salaries two years in a row.
Zopa Bank also launched a health cashback initiative, financial detox Lunch & Learn sessions and free mortgage advice. The People Experience team continuously gauges the impact of these initiatives through regular feedback and revises the benefits where necessary. Notably, it nurtures a sense of belonging among the employees by dedicating some company meetings to non-business-related topics like mental health support and LGBTQ+ inclusion and engaging employee resource groups, who have come up with innovative suggestions around menopause and menstruation among other areas.
Outcome
Zopa Bank’s active engagement strategy has resulted in attrition rates dropping by nine percentage points between April 2022 and April 2023. The enhanced co-parent leave was used by 20 new male parents. Investors, encouraged by the company’s people-focused approach, have invested an additional £150 million in 2023 alone, emphasising the tangible value of building a great workplace culture.
Finally, in its recent engagement survey, 89% of Zopians said they would recommend Zopa Bank as a great place to work, and the company also has an impressive 4.5/5 satisfaction score on Glassdoor – among the highest in the UK financial services industry. These results highlight the benefits of a successful investment in employee wellbeing and culture.