PEOPLE & CULTURE PULSE · ISSUE 2 · FEBRUARY 2026
A monthly benchmark for People & Culture teams: the talking points that matter and how your culture compares, built on Deltabase data covering 5,500+ companies and 11M employee reviews.
Banking set the tone for February. Barclays put AI at the centre of its next set of targets, pay for UK bank bosses climbed by around a third, and official figures put unemployment at 5.2%. Together they point to a familiar tension for People teams: leaders are asking more of their workforce while rewarding the top. Our data shows how employees rate their leaders across ten of the world's largest banks, and where that is changing.
Leroy Hall, Deltabase
What happened: On 10 February, Barclays reported 2025 pre-tax profit up 12% to £9.1bn and raised its target for return on tangible equity to above 14% by 2028, with more than £15bn to be returned to shareholders from 2026 to 2028. Chief executive C.S. Venkatakrishnan said the bank would use AI to raise productivity and efficiency.
The Deltabase lens: Barclays' NSS moved from −1.1% in 2024 to +2.2% in 2025 (3,038 and 2,081 reviews), and Supportive Leadership improved 8.8 pts to −18.1%. Tech in Workplace, however, sits at −40.4%.
So what: Employees are warming to Barclays' leadership but remain negative about the tools they use. AI-led productivity plans start from that base, so measure tech sentiment before and after any rollout.
What happened: Figures reported on 13 February showed Barclays' chief executive received more than £15m for 2025, up 29%, and Lloyds' Charlie Nunn £7.4m, up 32%. Bonus pools rose 15% to £2.2bn at Barclays, 11% to £495m at NatWest and 10% to £405m at Lloyds.
The Deltabase lens: Employee views of leadership moved the other way at two of the three. Lloyds' Supportive Leadership score fell 12.0 pts to −38.1% in 2025, and NatWest's slipped from −3.3% to −7.5%, although NatWest remains the strongest of the ten banks we track.
So what: Rising executive pay is easier to explain when employees trust their leaders. Where leadership sentiment is falling, reward communications need to show how pay at the top links to the experience of the wider workforce.
What happened: ONS figures on 17 February put UK unemployment at 5.2% for October to December 2025, up on the quarter and the year. Regular pay growth was 4.2% (3.4% in the private sector), payrolled employees were 121,000 lower than a year earlier, and vacancies were broadly flat at 726,000.
The Deltabase lens: In banking, employees were already less positive about their prospects. Career Progression sentiment fell at eight of the ten banks we track in 2025, and the median dropped from −37.9% to −47.2%.
So what: Lower attrition is not the same as engagement. When people stay because the market is tight, career conversations and internal mobility matter more, not less.
−18.4%: the median Supportive Leadership score across ten Top 100 banks in 2025, up from −25.0% in 2024, with five of the ten improving.
| Bank | 2024 | 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard Chartered | −37.1% | −18.1% | +19.0 pts |
| Barclays | −26.9% | −18.1% | +8.8 pts |
| HSBC | −20.7% | −18.6% | +2.0 pts |
| NatWest Group | −3.3% | −7.5% | −4.2 pts |
| Lloyds Banking Group | −26.2% | −38.1% | −12.0 pts |
| Median (10 banks) | −25.0% | −18.4% | +6.6 pts |
Source: Deltabase Culture data, Employee Net Sentiment Score (−100% to +100%), Supportive Leadership topic, 2024 and 2025. Median across JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest Group and Standard Chartered.
Two UK-headquartered banks, two different trajectories. Barclays' NSS rose from −1.1% to +2.2% in 2025, while HSBC improved more modestly, from −3.6% to −2.6% (3,525 and 2,586 reviews). Both now sit at around −18% on Supportive Leadership. The clearest gap is Work-Life Balance: Barclays nearly doubled its score, from +18.1% to +35.0%, while HSBC was broadly flat at +5.7%. For People teams benchmarking against either bank, flexibility and workload are where the employee experience diverges.
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Sources: BusinessDay/Reuters (10 February 2026); MKFM (13 February 2026); ONS, Labour market overview, UK (17 February 2026); Deltabase Culture data.