Chief people officer, Sophie Pazzaglia, discusses how West Brom Building Society has aligned its people value proposition with its core business objective of supporting people through a lifetime of financial security.
As a mutual building society owned by its members, West Bromwich Building Society’s core purpose centres on helping people build long-term financial security. This defining philosophy extends directly to its internal people proposition, where its reward and benefits strategy is designed to support employees holistically throughout their entire career and life journey.
In this episode of the Employee Benefits podcast, Sophie Pazzaglia, chief people officer, discusses the society’s commitment to offering meaningful, multi-layered support rather than short-term perks. Grounded in its wider people value proposition, the organisation’s approach integrates career growth, inclusion, flexible-working arrangements, and comprehensive wellbeing options.
At a glance
West Brom Building Society is a mutual financial services organisation that helps people achieve financial security through savings and homeownership. As a building society, it is owned by its members rather than shareholders, allowing it to focus on delivering long-term value for customers, employees and the communities it serves. It provides a range of savings products and mortgage options to customers across the UK.
It has a range of roles across both customer service and specialist functions. Customer service positions include branch roles such as customer service advisers and branch managers, telephony customer service agents in contact centres, and mortgage and savings services teams. Specialist functions include roles from disciplines such as finance, risk, compliance, IT and change, marketing, human resources and product management.
The building society has approximately 750 employees. Its average age range falls within the 35-to-44 age category, and the average length of service is nine years.
The primary business objectives impacting benefits for the coming year
- Delivery of the Making Tomorrow strategy: this ensures that customers continue to be provided with the products and services they need. This positions the building society as a meaningful part in the lives of its communities and employees: financial stability runs through everything it does.
Career history
Sophie Pazzaglia joined West Brom Building Society in 2010. She started her career in professional services where she trained as a chartered accountant and joined the building society as an internal auditor. She then held roles in strategy, secretariat and HR. “Disciplines like audit and strategy give you a great enterprise view of a business and have helped give me the knowledge and insight that enables me to deliver a people leadership role,” says Pazzaglia.
She finds it difficult to name one benefit as her favourite, but says: “I think our pension offering is a standout; we are making a broader statement as a firm that employers need to think about their [employees’] financial futures, not just the here and now.”
Pazzaglia joined the building society in the wake of the financial crisis and has seen the business survive, stabilise, and now thrive. “I’m most proud of our society achieving The Sunday Times’ Best Places to Work twice in a row; this is voted for by our people, it’s not an award you can ‘buy’ and really reflects the hard work we put into the workplace for our people, as well as the wonderful West Brom-ness of colleagues themselves.
“On a personal level, the consistent thing which I find rewarding is developing people and seeing them grow and flourish; whatever role I’ve been in, this is the element which always feels great.”