Inclusivity at Northwestern Mutual
Challenge
Teaching Inclusion After more than 150 years of successful business - with a mostly white makeup - Northwestern Mutual embarked on a multi-year Culture of Respect initiative to bring about mass internal change and foster the diversification of its sales, advisory, and executive talent. Northwestern Mutual saw 20% more retention and growth in offices that created more inclusive culture, and they were looking for a learning curriculum & strategy that would authentically reach their 76 field offices. A unified curriculum at this scale was new (most states don't even require this sort of training!) —with offices spread throughout the country, training was formerly the responsibility of each office. Our videos were major content for their first company-and-nation-wide effort to cultivate impactful diversity. Their Goals: -Teach & Create an inclusive culture: Create bystander action through social learning and interactive media. -Retain diverse talent; get them to the five-year milestone, beyond which 98% of employees retire with NM.
Solution
We engaged with a team of more than 150 members, as well as over 50 SMEs & stakeholders to create training goals, identify key issues for portrayal, and delineate separate learning paths for the Culture of Respect eLearning module. Scenarios & Scripts were developed with reports & stories from NM’s own talent - Shot at real Northwestern Mutual locations, our video training program followed 56 characters through various provocative instances of exclusion. Check-ins and prompts to discuss acts of exclusion were key—a major learning goal was for employees to see exclusion in relatable situations, and gain the confidence to step in and report it.
Results
-After several months, over 20,000 learners had taken the training, with above a 90% completion rate throughout two thirds of the whole company—an increase over past efforts. -Surveyed employees in aggregate report their self-confidence about stepping in and reporting exclusion at 4.5 out of 5. -Learners are thrilled: -“This was very well done! Very relatable and simple to adopt.....thank you for the training!” -“This was very good training. I learned quite a bit and would feel confident if needing to handle a problem after having this training.” -“I enjoyed this training course, I feel like it was well executed and up to date with situations that really happen in the modern day work environment.” -“This subject cannot be emphasized enough and I did appreciate how NM brought real world examples of this training into play. This course could possibly be expounded upon in some ways that maybe are not so obvious, such as more subtle discriminations. Otherwise I enjoyed the course tremendously. Thank you, thank you, thank you ERC!” -“Great eLearning. The videos were well made, and weren't over-acted. I appreciated the prompts to know what was appropriate and what wasn't. Thank you for laying it out clearly!” -“I feel like the training was beneficial and touched on many important subjects regarding respect and being self-aware as well as being aware of the feelings of others.’ -“I would like to praise whomever put together the situation videos. I was sufficiently disturbed by them and had to think about some of the more ambiguous answers. The actors/actions in these trainings often come across as cringe-y or non-realistic, but they were excellent this time.” -“The Culture of Respect training was great and will certainly aid in enhancing the culture at the office.”
Upper Diamond
We are a minority-owned, SBE certified agency located in Los Angeles that has been in business since 2006. Upper Diamond is an award-winning 14-year-old digital agency with a strong legacy of innovation in the marketing, technology, and content creation space. We have worked with global corporations like Salesforce,...
Want fresh marketing stories in your inbox?
Get the weekly email that makes you a marketing genius.
Stay informed and inspired, for free.