RBS approached Eli in 2016 to help them design and deliver a new preboarding experience for their emerging talent, focusing initially on their graduate pre-boarding experience. Now, Eli manages pre-boarding and onboarding for all NatWest Group emerging talent, as well as delivering work experience programmes for NatWest Group & RBS students and NEETS across the UK.
Case Study: NatWest Group
“With Eli, we offer a structured, personalised, and engaging journey that sets our new joiners up for success before they even walk through the door. Personalisation at scale is easy and our decade-long partnership is testament to how Eli evolves, innovates and stays relevant." - NatWest Group
NatWest Group's Early Careers pre-boarding experience is arguably one of the best in the industry. Already this year, It's their experience has picked up two major industry awards, including the coveted Institute of Student Employers Best Offer to Onboarding Experience. Immersive, personalised and connection-led, their onboarding experience evolves each year to overcome key industry challenges, such as increasing reneges, and we're produ to say that we've been working with NatWest Group (NWG) for over 10 years.
NatWest Group’s onboarding focuses on supporting emerging talent in three core areas. First, Eli helps new hires get under the skin of the bank. Helping them understand its values, purpose and culture, as well as building knowledge about how they do business, no matter what their background.
Next, a great deal of support, learning and guidance helps new hires make the tricky transition from student to work life, preparing them for work, improving soft-skills and ensuring they’re prepared for their induction and the first few months at work.
But, most importantly, Eli is used to create a real sense of community. Giving grads, interns, students and apprentices numerous ways to connect with their peers, recruiters, managers, buddies and other key stakeholders.
What makes the NatWest Group pre-boarding experience so strong?
A personalised experience
NWG's content is tailored, evolves to suit student needs, and grow as day one approaches so they’re not overwhelmed. NWG's Candidate Engagement Council publish newsletters every month, and answer FAQs with TikTok style videos, which are uploaded to the social wall. This bite-sized approach builds knowledge and confidence, and creates high engagement – in 2025, students visited our portal twice a week!
Real connections
The portal helps students interact with others in their cohort, their buddy, manager and the Early Talent team. They can network, attend online events, make friends, and importantly get support when they need it. This strengthens their commitment to us and builds a sense of community.
Social mobility and productivity
All of the above, helps to ensure students arrives with the same level of knowledge, whatever their background. And, innovative features like our engagement score (see below) help us spot those who are struggling.
Wellbeing and mental health
Every time a student logs in, the portal asks how they’re feeling. Anyone who indicates they’re feeling down hears from the NWG Early Talent team shortly afterwards to make sure they’re ok. This proactive approach is great for mental health and reducing reneges.
Eli Insights TM
Eli tracks everything our students do while logged in, which in 2025 was 184,558 minutes of data. It uses this data to give each person a real-time engagement score, enabling us to spot people who are struggling or disengaged so we can reach out to them. This also helps NWG's EC team flag potential reneges early, enabling them to stop that renege happening, or offer the place another candidate.
Technology-enabled people
Eli automates and streamlines NWG's entire pre-boarding journey, from personalisation at scale (2026 will see over 1200 students join NWG around the world) to reminders about task completion, freeing the EC team up to spend more time on the value add. It also supports their line managers and buddies too. They can connect easily, publish social content and answer questions quickly, which is great for our students and takes the weight off our team.
Real time MI
Finally, the MI dashboard gives NWG an in-depth view of engagement across every cohort over time, and allows them to drill down into cohorts, programmes or locations (or combinations of all three). It’s analysis of this MI, and feedback from in-platform pulse surveys, that helps us improve our experience year on year.
This approach keeps reneges on offers well below the industry benchmark. In 2025 Eli delivered a 5% reduction to grad reneges – a cost avoidance estimated at £73,692. Conversions from interns to graduates also hit 88% for the last two years, creating a highly sustainable pipeline that reduces NWG's cost per hire.
Their experience naturally adapts and evolves every year, Eli & NWG working together with current grads to deliver the very best experience possible. Not surprising then that we've picked up a CIPD Award for Employee Engagement, an RMA for video content, and most recently Best Onboarding Experience at the ISE Awards and Talent Labs Awards 2026.
Related Insights
