Working from home could harm women’s careers, Nationwide boss warns

Working from home could harm women’s careers because they are less likely to come into the office than their male colleagues, the boss of Britain’s biggest building society has warned.

Debbie Crosbie, the chief executive of Nationwide, said the fact more women have taken advantage of flexible working – as they tend to juggle work and childcare – could cost them in terms of progression to more senior roles.

Nationwide, which has more than 17 million customers and 18,000 employees, 60% of whom are female, brought in a “work anywhere” policy for staff who did not work in branches during the pandemic. The policy changed a year ago and now requires staff to come in to the office at least two days a week.

Crosbie told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday: “One of the only good things that came out of the pandemic was the fact that people got much more comfortable with working flexibly, working from home. And I do think that’s very useful.

“My watch out, though, is that what we find, certainly at Nationwide, is that men are more likely to come into the office than women, and we just need to be really careful that we don’t prevent women from accessing the development-watching. I benefited enormously from watching some really excellent leaders and how they navigated challenging problems.”

Crosbie, who took the helm at Nationwide in June 2022 after previously running TSB Bank, recalled working early in her career for Lynne Peacock, then chief executive of Clydesdale Bank, whom she described as a “very inspiring female CEO”.

She considers herself lucky that she was already an executive when she had her daughter at the age of 32, “and it allowed me to get the opportunity to make different decisions. I got a great lot of support from business leaders who let me work part time for a few years”.

Crosbie said women nowadays are having children later, often in their late 30s, which is the time when people usually advance to more senior executive positions.

This year’s FTSE women’s leaders review, a government-backed annual report, found that 42% of directors at FTSE 350-listed companies were women. Crosbie noted that prior to 2011, it was less than 10%.

“We have made enormous progress. What I’d say is, though, we’re not making enough progress on the CEOs and the executives and it’s really important that we keep pushing the pipeline of senior women coming through to make sure that we really up the amount of female CEOs we have, it’s still very small.”

The review also found that there were 21 female chief executives leading FTSE 350 firms, including 10 at FTSE 100 companies.

“So whilst we’ve made progress, I think there’s a lot more to do,” Crosbie said.