Culture Change at Scale: How NatWest Used Behavioural Science to Transform
A Webinar with Steve Martin, Influence at Work, along with Hilary Kitson and Catherine Stephens, NatWest Group
By Deb Braidic, GAABS Executive Board Member
For anyone working within a large, highly regulated corporate environment—or anyone advising such organisations—GAABS’ June 2026 webinar about using behavioural science to drive culture change within a large organisation provided rare insights. In particular, this session gave participants a window into how behavioural science can drive meaningful cultural transformation when resources are limited and stakeholder complexity is high.
Former GAABS board chair, Steve Martin, hosted two senior executives from NatWest Group who are currently leading a transformative culture change initiative grounded in applied behavioural science: 1) Hilary Kitson, Group Chief Operating Officer Designate, and 2) Catherine Stephens, Director of Culture. Together they painted a picture of their practical experiences of implementing behavioural science principles across one of the UK's largest financial services organisations.
What's Below
READ: A TLDR summary of the key takeaways
WATCH: The full recording is available to GAABS members
READ: Detailed insights from the discussion, organised by theme
TLDR Summary
Culture is behaviour at scale. NatWest identified three core behaviours—providing clarity, innovating together, and trusting colleagues—as the foundation for their strategy to manage, grow, and simplify operations.
Work hacks beat grand initiatives. Small, deliberate behavioural nudges embedded into daily routines create lasting cultural change more effectively than large-scale programmes that require sustained willpower.
Data tells the story. NatWest built a compelling business case for behavioural interventions within a heavily regulated environment with metrics taken from employee feedback and Net Promoter Scores.
Get a seat at the table early. The most impactful wins came from joining existing change programmes at the conversation's start—not pitching behavioural science as an afterthought. Unexpected allies include executive assistants and COOs.
The barrier isn't awareness; it's organisational inertia. Most organisations understand they need to change but default to training and mandatory performance metrics. Behavioural science offers a fundamentally different alternative approach.
Watch
VIDEO: Culture Change at Scale: How NatWest Used Behavioural Science to Transform
Summary
The Challenge: Culture Change in a Heavily Regulated Context
NatWest operates at scale—tens of thousands of employees, global operations, and strict regulatory frameworks. For most large organisations, culture change feels abstract and distant from day-to-day business priorities. Hilary and Catherine spoke frankly about the difficulty of moving the needle when competing initiatives, established processes, and institutional inertia all work against change.
The regulatory environment adds another layer of complexity. In the UK financial services sector, regulators increasingly expect organisations to audit culture and behaviour as part of demonstrating an institution's health. This creates both pressure and opportunity: pressure to change, but also a clear business case for investment.
The Three Behaviours: A Clear North Star
Rather than launching a generic "culture change" programme, NatWest took a disciplined approach. Working with applied behavioural science expertise, they identified three specific behaviours that would drive their strategic direction:
Providing clarity to people when things are complex
Innovating and doing it together (collaboration rather than siloed decision-making)
Trusting colleagues
Catherine explained that identifying these three behaviours required substantial work—determining what actually drives the culture you want to achieve, not the culture you think you should have. Once that clarity existed, the team could think deliberately about what interventions would help people exhibit these behaviours more naturally.
Work Hacks: Small Changes, Material Impact
Perhaps the most practical insight from the conversation concerned what Hilary termed "work hacks"—small, deliberate nudges embedded into the way people actually work. Rather than relying on training programmes or making new behaviours a formal performance goal (the default approach in most large organisations), NatWest designers behavioural nudges into existing workflows. The principle is straightforward: if you want people to behave differently, make the desired behaviour easier and the current behaviour slightly less convenient.
Examples mentioned included embedding decision frameworks into everyday tools and communications, restructuring meeting invitations to encourage the desired behaviours, and removing friction from activities aligned with the new cultural direction.
The power of work hacks lies in their sustainability. They don't require people to remember to behave differently or to deploy sustained willpower. Instead, the environment itself prompts the behaviour. As Steve Martin observed during the session, "If culture is essentially behaviours at scale, then there's a real place for work hacks."
Data-Driven Decisions in a Risk-Averse Environment
In financial services, nothing moves forward without evidence. Hilary and Catherine described using data strategically to build the case for behavioural interventions:
Employee voice: Asking colleagues directly what problems they identify and what solutions they propose
Experimentation: Running small trials to test whether proposed behavioural interventions actually change behaviour and attitudes
Net Promoter Scores (NPS): Using familiar measurement frameworks from the financial services world to quantify whether employees would recommend the new approach to colleagues
Material business impact: Demonstrating how behavioural changes translate to measurable outcomes—whether efficiency improvements, risk reduction, or customer outcomes
Catherine noted the importance of identifying which areas of the organisation were already excelling at these behaviours and which stood out as requiring intervention. This data-driven prioritisation meant effort went toward areas of greatest need rather than being spread thinly across the organisation.
Getting a Seat at the Table: An Unexpected Insight
One of the most practically useful insights came when discussing how to actually influence an organisation as a behavioural science professional or practitioner.
Hilary pointed out that large organisations run numerous concurrent change programmes at any given time. The teams running those programmes—system implementations, process redesigns, and regulatory initiatives—often don't think like behavioural scientists. They default to training and mandated performance goals because that's what they know.
The opportunity lies in joining those conversations at the start. When a programme lead says, "We need a new system; let's run a training course and make it a performance goal," a behavioural scientist can offer a fundamentally different approach. Getting that initial conversation, however, is the real challenge.
Hilary shared an unexpected winning tactic: executive assistants. After delivering a "teach-in" to the executive assistant community about what NatWest was doing and why, those assistants began embedding the work hacks into their leaders' calendars and meeting invitations. Suddenly, the most senior people in the organisation were receiving prompts designed to encourage the desired behaviours. That's influence at scale.
Similarly, chief operating officers and business management teams proved to be powerful allies—they control the operations where behaviour change must actually happen.
The Barrier Isn't Ignorance; It's Inertia
When asked what prevents organisations from implementing behavioural science solutions more readily, Hilary offered a sobering observation: most organisations understand they need to change. The barrier is status quo bias manifesting as organisational inertia.
She referenced missed opportunities at other organisations—a $120 million annual profit opportunity left unrealised at Lyft because left-digit bias wasn't incorporated into pricing, or a hospital that improved generic prescription rates from 75% to 100% through a behavioural intervention.
To overcome this inertia, Hilary emphasised the power of vivid case studies. Sharing concrete examples of where behavioural interventions have created material impact—with real numbers and real consequences—cuts through abstract discussion and creates urgency.
Looking Forward: Behaviour and AI
As the conversation drew to a close, Hilary highlighted an emerging challenge: as financial services organisations introduce artificial intelligence into their operations, many employees feel anxious or threatened. Behavioural science has a role to play in helping people build confidence and feel like partners with AI technology rather than replaced by it.
This points to an ongoing opportunity for behavioural science practitioners: large organisations will continue facing complex change, and those who can translate behavioural science insights into practical interventions will remain in demand.
What Makes This Relevant to GAABS Members?
This webinar spoke directly to several key audiences within the GAABS community:
For practitioners working inside large organisations: The session provided a practical roadmap for embedding behavioural science into real-world change programmes and navigating the political dynamics of large institutions.
For consultants and advisors: Understanding how to "get a seat at the table" and frame behavioural science as a solution to problems that organisations already recognise is essential to building client relationships.
For academics researching culture and organisational behaviour: NatWest's willingness to share their approach demonstrates how rigorous behavioural science can be applied within genuine organisational constraints—not in a laboratory, but in the messy reality of a heavily regulated financial services environment.
For corporate members and those considering membership: This session exemplified the value proposition of GAABS: connecting applied behavioural science research with practitioners solving real-world challenges at scale. It's exactly the kind of bridge-building that GAABS exists to facilitate.
For those starting their behavioural science journey: The emphasis on starting with data, identifying clear behavioural targets, and working through existing structures offers a practical playbook rather than an intimidating mandate.
In Closing
Culture change at scale remains one of the most challenging problems facing large organisations. What makes NatWest's approach noteworthy is they've taken well-established behavioural science principles and implemented them with rigour, patience, and genuine commitment to evidence.
Thanks to Hilary Kitson and Catherine Stephens for their generous sharing of time, insight, and hard-won experience. And thanks to all those who participated in the webinar. For those interested in exploring culture change, organisational behaviour, or the implementation of behavioural science in your own organisation, we encourage you to stay connected with GAABS and explore the rich network of practitioners and researchers within our community.
For more information about GAABS, please visit GAABS.org and follow us on LinkedIn.
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