Prioritising health & wellbeing: Introducing our new employee benefit - Gympass

This week, we launched our partnership with Gympass - A new benefit available to all Nationwide employees.

We spoke with Nathan, our Proposition, Recognition and Benefits Specialist whose most recent project has been to introduce Gympass as a new employee benefit.

Can you tell us a bit about you?

I'm Nathan and have worked for Nationwide for just under 2 years. My role as Proposition, Recognition and Benefits Specialist sits within the wider Reward team and focuses on developing, managing and enhancing the propositions and benefits we offer to current and perspective employees. This can be anything from supporting health and wellbeing to providing access to electric vehicles via a salary sacrifice benefit. My role is currently focusing on introducing our new employee benefit - Gympass.

What is Gympass and how will Nationwide employees benefit from it?

Firstly, don't be distracted by their name, Gympass are more than just Gyms. Through their many partnerships, Gympass offer a broad range of health and wellbeing support for employees, be that in person at the gym, virtually via personal training sessions or flexibly via the apps available for example; Thrive Global, MyFitnessPal or Meditopia. Our employees will benefit from instant access to 10 premium wellbeing apps focusing on all aspects of wellbeing, at no cost to them. They will also have the ability to select plans, at competitive prices, which will enhance their Gympass experience by opening up a network of gyms, leisure centres and personal training sessions, along with additional apps such as Headspace, Strava and Calm. What's even better is that they can share this with 3 family members, allowing them to benefit too. 

You worked closely with introducing this benefit. Why Gympass? What does having this benefit mean to you?

Gympass understand the benefit of providing a holistic approach to health and wellbeing and have a clear focus on ensuring their platform engages our employees. This benefit is an ideal way for our employees to explore the many facets of wellbeing, be that support with their mental health, finding ways to manage their sleep or start a path towards a fitness or health goal. For me, it’s about providing our employees with choice and variety in a flexible way, Gympass have captured this perfectly with their many partners, flexible price plans and simple approach. When overlaying their passion and enthusiasm for their product, it’s a perfect combination.  

What's the process of obtaining a new benefit? 

Before we look for a new benefit provider, we clearly define our goal, for Gympass this was about providing a proactive and holistic wellbeing solution, once we know what we want we then look to the market to see who can help us achieve our goals. For us its about finding the right mix of expertise, range of benefits to employees, technology and most of all engagement, if we find this in a partner, we know we can set ourselves up for success. It's also about looking to those companies who have been using the partners we find, with over 6000 clients globally, we've managed to reach out and understand how Gympass has benefited others who have successfully partnered with them.

A year from now, what do you want to see to show that Gympass has been a success?

Aside from our employees becoming a member and utilising both the free and paid plans, I want to see real-life stories of how Gympass and their partner apps, gyms and providers have helped them in their day to day lives. It would be amazing to see that our colleagues have reached a fitness goal with the support of Gympass or used one of the many partner apps to make positive steps to improve their wellbeing. We want to build a strong relationship with Gympass and utilise their expertise, so embedding them into our wellbeing support and allowing them to share this with our employees via events, webinars and tailored content will also be key to success.

Take a look at all the benefits we offer here.