To support parents who have to juggle work and a family, our benefits include discounted childcare vouchers. We even have a specific intranet site for first-time parents, families who are relocating and parents with children who are growing up.

Eligible employees get full pay during their first ten weeks of maternity leave. All maternity benefits apply to those adopting and fostering long-term as well as natural parents. What’s more, we provide paternity leave at two weeks full pay.

We also pay a £200 return to work bonus to eligible employees. We're proud that most of our new mums choose to return to work after maternity leave.

There's more to life than work. So we’ve developed flexible working patterns to suit our business and our people – including part-time, term-time, job share, annualised hours, flexi-time and home working. Around 25% of our people work part-time, and many full-time employees make use of our other options.

We really are nationwide. We represent every section of Britain's community – including people with differing personal and religious beliefs. Currently, 8% of our employees have an ethnic minority background, compared to an industry benchmark of just over 7%. And over 28% of those on our Nationwide Graduate Programme in 2011 are from ethnic minorities. In 2009, ‘Race for Opportunity’ also awarded us Silver status for our continual efforts to improve our figures; we remained in the Top 10 for the Private Sector; and we were ranked second alongside other entries from financial organisations.

‘Opportunity Now’ awarded us Silver status in 2011  for our approach to gender equality. Currently, women make up almost 70% of our workforce, over 63% of our managers (more than double the financial services industry benchmark) and 28% of our senior managers. We also firmly support the work of the Equal Opportunities Commission on closing the pay gap and our Equal Pay Audits make sure our drive for equality is backed up by what we pay. Much better than the national and industry norm, our results also outshone those of our competitors. What’s more, all our policies are free from gender bias.

We want all our people to feel supported at work so we are members of Stonewall, the leading national lesbian, gay and bisexual organisation, as a Diversity Champion. We are regular contributors to Stonewall's Workplace Equality Index of the UK's top 100 employers of lesbians and gays - and have a Nationwide LGBT network group. We ensure all our terms and conditions embrace same sex partners - our Pension Scheme was one of the first to issue pension entitlement to same sex partners.

Our ‘Positive About Disabled People’ two ticks symbol underlines the fact that disability is no barrier to success here. We offer members and employees with disabilities the same level of service and opportunity as non-disabled members and employees. We are dedicated to meeting the needs of disabled employees and members – whether that's through better access or the right equipment, updated policies and procedures or alternative formats for literature, education and training or awareness raising.

Our youngest branch manager is 21, the eldest is 62. And over 13% of our workforce is aged 50 or over. Clearly we recognise the experience and qualities age can bring to our business. That’s why we introduced flexible retirement up to age 75; why we were a founder member of the Employers Forum on Age; and why, in 2003, our former Chief Executive was the first to sign up to the Break the Age.

We continually promote diversity awareness in our workplace. Part of that was a diversity training video, ‘Valuing Everyone’, which won a great deal of positive feedback from employees and three gold awards from the International Visual Communication Association - Barrier Pledge and encouraged other businesses to follow suit.