Nucleus: Applying the human touch

Nicola Megaw, chief legal officer and company secretary. Age: 38 
Nicola began her career in 2005 as a trainee with the law firm, Shepherd & Wedderburn. 

“I had seven great years there, but when I left to go on maternity leave, I knew in my heart that I would be unlikely to return. 

“Back then, pretty much all law firms charged by the hour, but hadn’t adapted the working day for the significant number of its people that were juggling family hours and billable hours. 

“I had met and worked with our CEO David earlier that year and found everything that he had built and stood for in Nucleus really inspiring,” she recalls.
So she did return to work, joining Nucleus as the head of legal.

“There was a high degree of trust and autonomy from the start. I was the first to work flexible, compressed hours on the management team. 

“That meant a huge amount to me – I was getting recognised for the work I would deliver, but trusted to do it in the time that worked best for me and my team. 

“We’ve gone from a start-up to scale up – and now it feels like we’ve grown up as we listed on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange last year. It’s been humbling to be trusted to grow my career here at the same pace.”

What made it particularly helpful for Nicola, she says, is that everyone on the Nucleus executive team sets an authentic example that we value our people spending time on what matters out of the office as much as in it. 

“We “leave loudly” and make it normal to say I’m leaving early to be there at the school gates.”

Nicola adds that with the realities of modern working practices taking their toll on mental health – rather than maintain a 24/7 image of always on, we should be seeing everyone as essentially part-time. 

“This really resonates for us. If everyone manages their own time and the expectations of others, the importance of 9-5 and the five day week will diminish,” she notes. 

As a financial services firm, Nicola says that Nucleus very much adopts the culture and attitude of a fintech start-up, rather than a traditional household name financial company or bank. 

“You want the mindset and the culture of a start-up, with the capabilities and maturity of a traditional company.

“When we think about what it is to be diverse, and to succeed doing so, we’ve got to look at this as being about humans, not just women. It’s about building trust in an inclusive environment and seeking high performance and delivery in return.

"The more firms can promote relational leadership and take an adult to adult ‘outcomes-orientated’ approach to measuring people’s contribution, the more flexible and adaptable they are going to be. Their people, whether male or female, will also be a lot happier,” she notes. 

While diversity initiatives by government and by regulators are meaningful, they focus on singular issues such as targets to address gender and race inequalities, and as a result may only move the dial slowly.

“We need to be outcome focused. Good decision making requires diversity of thought. 

“More rapid change can come about when companies really look at their hiring policies and counter the biases, conscious or unconscious, that ensure a diverse range of backgrounds and ways of thinking, right across the team... I’m very happy that we have that here, and we try to pass it on to others in the financial services sector.”

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Kirsty Lynagh, chief people officer at Nucleus, Age: 37
Kirsty joined Nucleus four years ago, at the age of 33. “We want Nucleus to be a place where our people do the best work of their lives and we recognise that in order to do this our people need to be their authentic selves.

“Our diversity activity has been driven by our desire to win in the marketplace. This is not a box-ticking thing, it’s a commercial imperative. It isn’t about being PC, it’s about being future relevant and durable.”

Kirsty adds that like many working parents, she has two major focuses in her life, her work and her family. 

“So I needed a company that understood that I can deliver my best work if I have the flexibility to integrate those two things together”

As chief people officer at Nucleus, she says, she both found a company that could respond to this requirement, and that was prepared to give her a role in shaping what flexibility in the workplace meant for all Nucleus people. 

Kirsty coined a phrase that has come to define much of the company’s “flexibility-in-the-workplace” strategy: You don’t have to give birth to something to work flexibly. In other words, flexible working that allows people to develop their full potential in the company while balancing the dual requirements of their personal and working lives, is available to all Nucleus people. 

Kirsty considers herself fortunate to have a career that has spanned 16 years, three industries and three countries.

“I’ve always had an affinity for getting the best out of people. Growing up in the Highlands with successful entrepreneurs as parents has meant from a young age I learnt what makes a company a great place to work. At Nucleus we believe we can’t win in the marketplace until we first win in the workplace and that’s the purpose of my role.”

For Kirsty, while she appreciates the need for the current regulatory and governance focus on reporting on a company’s inclusiveness across categories like race, gender and disability, for her the fundamental focus should be on the fact that we were humans way before we were ever resources or customers. 

“We see three major shifts of emphasis going on with regard to diversity in the work place.” 

1. From internal to both internal and external. Engaging our people AND our clients in conversation, education and awareness on inclusion.
2. From minority groups to engaging the majority. We’ve created ‘allies’ of activists rather than passive bystanders of underrepresented groups. We’ve also focused on areas our people have asked us to like mental health and neuro-diversity.
3. From the right thing to do to commercially relevant.

“The opposite of inclusion is completely offensive – it’s exclusion. 

“Nucleus is committed to being activists for inclusion within our culture so that we can extinguish exclusion. 

“We want to make a difference to humans – not just the humans of Nucleus or financial services but the humans in our society,” 
she says.