Data Empowerment and Positive Culture

Narrator: Data is your secret weapon as an employee experience leader. Whether you’re in HR, technology, communications, or otherwise. By tuning into your employee data, you understand your employees better. You get invaluable insight on where they need support, what’s working, what’s not, and act on it. In other words, if you’re not leveraging your data to improve the employee experience, you’re doing your employees a disservice. And there is a direct correlation between your employee experience and your business success. That’s one of the things we’re talking about with Tim Gerend.

Tim Gerend: The power of data not only is going to help our clients, but in addition to knowing more about our clients than anyone else, we also know more about our advisors businesses. So as we get more data, we’re going to have more insight and understanding of how do you build a great business. 

Narrator: Tim is Executive Vice President and Chief Distribution Officer at Northwestern Mutual, where he leads the career distribution, marketing, and strategic communications organizations to bring the company’s value proposition, brand, and story to life. Tim has been with Northwestern Mutual for over 20 years. having joined the company in 2002. Over that time, he served in a variety of leadership roles, including law, field compensation and planning, enterprise compliance, and campus planning. Tim’s background is in law, having previously served as an associate in the commercial litigation practice group at SafeRoth Shaw. Today, Tim and our host, Nicole Alvino, talk about infusing moments of giving back in the employee experience, creating both efficiency and personalization through technology, and how a great advisor Experience creates an even better client experience On cruising altitude, we talk about employee experience lessons from leaders at companies with over 30,000 employees. A lot like reaching, cruising, altitude at 30,000 feet. Things look a little different when you’re managing 30,000 people. On this podcast, we bring you insights from the leaders who inhabit that rarefied air. Today’s episode features an interview with Tim Gerend. But first, let’s hear a word from our sponsor. Thank you for listening to this episode of Cruising Altitude. This episode is brought to you by Firstup, the company that’s redefined. Finding the digital employee experience to put people first and lift companies up by connecting every worker everywhere with the information that helps them do their best work. Firstup has helped over 40 percent of the Fortune 100 companies like Amazon, Ford, and Pfizer stay agile and keep transforming. Learn more at firstup.io. And now your host, Nicole Alvino, CEO and co founder of Firstup.

Nicole Alvino: Thanks for joining me on this episode of Cruising Altitude. I’m Nicole Alvino, CEO and co founder of Firstup. At Firstup, we are a SaaS platform that provides exceptional employee experiences to 18 million employees around the world, including 40 of the Fortune 100. We know that when we invest Invest in our people. Incredible things happen to both our top and bottom line. And I’m thrilled to be joined by Tim Gerend today, the Chief Distribution Officer at Northwestern Mutual. Welcome, Tim. Great to be here. 

Tim Gerend: Thanks for having me.

Nicole Alvino: Yes. We have an exciting conversation today. I first would love for you to share three fun facts. When we have new employees start at Firstup, we always ask them for three fun facts as a great way to start to get to know you. 

Tim Gerend: Okay, so three fun facts. I was born in an army hospital and lived the first year of my life with my grandparents. That’s fun fact one. Fun fact two, I’m the father of four, so I have four kids aged 22 to 17, so they keep me pretty busy. And fun fact number three is I started my professional career as a litigator at a big law firm in Chicago. And I would have never guessed I’m doing what I’m doing today. So those are my three fun facts. I love it. 

Nicole Alvino: I’m the oldest of four and a mother of three, and I started my career at Enron. So maybe you litigated against some of my former bosses at some point.

Tim Gerend: No, no comment on that. 

Nicole Alvino: There we go. Okay, on to more interesting. Topics. Can you give us a little background just on your role at Northwestern Mutual for those listeners who aren’t so familiar? 

Tim Gerend: Yeah, so I’m at Northwestern Mutual. I’m responsible for our career field force and I’ll talk about what that is, but it’s basically 20, 000 advisors and team members who are out providing financial planning and advice all across America. And in addition to being responsible for the health and growth of our career advisor system, I’m also responsible for marketing and for strategic communications at Northwestern Mutual. So that’s my quip, sort of job description. 

Nicole Alvino: Nice. And when you talk about the people that you oversee, how many employees do you have? Are they all employees? Can you talk a little bit more about the talent that you have? 

Tim Gerend: Yeah, sure. So my functional responsibility at Northwestern Mutual includes a little more than a thousand of our home office employees. That’s a thousand of, call it eight thousand full time employees at Northwestern Mutual. And my field responsibility, so what we’re responsible for overseeing out there in the marketplace, is about 20, 000 largely independent contractors, advisors, and field leaders. So they build their own businesses. Again, they’re independent contractors, but they are officially and formally connected to Northwestern Mutual. And so our responsibility is to make sure that they’re healthy and growing and that they’re delivering on our value proposition in the marketplace. 

Nicole Alvino: I love that. It’s almost an extension of your workforce because they’re out there building the client relationships, really an extension of your brand. So how do you think about giving them that Northwestern Mutual experience, really helping to get them understand the culture and your mission so they can pass that on with all of their clients?

Tim Gerend: Yeah, Nicole, I think you’re right on. And I would even go even further than that. I’d say they are our brand. You know, our client experience is largely in the hands of our advisors. So people who are clients of Northwestern Mutual or buy our products, they all have a relationship with a full time Northwestern Mutual advisor or team member. And so the experience of our clients is really determined a lot by their relationship with their advisor. And so, We do a lot to make sure that experience for our clients and for our field is great. And I think one of the things that really makes Northwestern Mutual Northwestern Mutual is our system is very much organically grown. 99 percent or so of our recruits every year are brand new to the industry. So they learn about financial planning and about financial advice and what it means to be a professional here in this business. And so we train them really organically from scratch, what our value proposition is, how do you build a business? How do you do financial planning? How do you serve your clients? And so people grow up with an expectation of what it means to do things in the Northwestern Mutual way. The other thing that is really, I think, culturally important is we have a standard of excellence of sort of what we expect. You know, we take pride in delivering great value for our clients and policy owners. And we have a culture that’s highly abundant, so people do a lot of sharing, so while they’re independent contractors and they all want to grow and be great and maybe that’s be on stage or meet whatever their business goals are, they also are really excellent at helping each other and so we’re bringing them in to this culture where we have an expectation that they’re going to be really good at what they do, they’re going to serve their clients and their community at the highest level. And they’re going to give back, and they’re going to help others. And I think it’s one of the great sort of characteristics of our culture that our very best give back the most. And we want that to be the experience from when people start day one. And as you might imagine, we have lots of meetings, lots of training, online and in person and otherwise, to help people learn how to do this. We also have a very strong culture of what we call joint work. So when I started out as a litigator in Chicago, I wasn’t handling cases on my own. I was working with junior partners or senior partners or others. Same way here at Northwestern Mutual. People have the opportunity in a lot of cases to work with more senior experience, either field leaders or advisors, so that they have confidence that they’re serving their clients the right way and also learning the business along the way. So those are a few of the ways in which we go about doing that. I love that. 

Nicole Alvino: We think a lot about the employee experience or, or agent partner experience from hire to retire and all of those moments that matter throughout. And so many of those moments are cultural connection moments, they’re training moments. I love that the giving back moments, I think that it sounds like such a special part of your culture and something that is so important to bring everyone along from day one. Yeah, right on. Great. So you’ve obviously had a long employee experience yourself at Northwestern Mutual. What are some of the things that’s kept you there for over 20 years?

Tim Gerend: Yeah, it’s been a really good run. I started here in October of 2002, so over 20 years and I’ve worked in a lot of different roles starting in the law department and then a variety of roles on the business side. And I, you know, there are a few things that have kept me here, but it really comes down mostly to people and culture. First of all, this is a really mission driven organization. It’s unique. We’re a mutual company, so not publicly traded. We’re owned by our policy owners, and we have a really strong ethic and mission around serving our policy owners. Doing the right thing and making sure that everything we do is in their best interest. And that values driven organization is something that appealed to me, like from the day one when I started interviewing here. The fact that we’re a mutual and we’re not bound by sort of like the quarterly earning cycle and, you know, analyst estimates and all of that stuff and we can really run the business over the long term, those were things that were really important to me. Even as I was being recruited by Northwestern Mutual, but as I’ve been here longer, you know, with each passing year, I appreciate how meaningful they are as part of this place, and they’ve kept me here. But then I think what’s goes hand in hand with that is, this is really a people business. It’s certainly true in the field where it’s relationship building and all of it that you would expect, but I think what really makes this place is the caliber of the people, very mission driven. Really smart, focused on doing the right thing. And there’s a lot of teamwork. For a really big company, you know, we’re a Fortune 90 company or so, we really have one P& L statement. What that means is we’re all kind of in everybody’s business because everything we do is connected. You know, we’ve got one field force, we’ve got one client experience. And I love that part of it because I’ve always liked being part of a winning team. I think when you can have people working on something big together and you can do more together than you could alone, like that’s hard, but it also for me has been really rewarding. And then the last thing I’d say is obviously I’ve had the opportunity to learn and grow here. You know, I mentioned in my fun fact, I would have never imagined I’d be running the distribution system here when I started out as a line lawyer. And the company has supported and invested in my development in a lot of different ways and given me opportunities to do things that weren’t sort of in my past experience directly. And I’ve always been a very curious and eager learner. And so the ability to do new things and keep learning and growing. You know, has been one of the things that’s kept me here, too. But I think it’s really those things. Mission, people, and the opportunity to keep growing. 

Nicole Alvino: I love that. And mission and people in that opportunity. That is such a core of a phenomenal people experience, employee experience, and so many businesses, your business, my business, it is about people, and it’s about people understanding that mission and translating that to your clients and giving them that incredible client experience that really does come from the investment. That’s an estimate that you’re making in all of your people in the field. 

Tim Gerend: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s such a service business too, you know, I mean, I have the privilege of spending a lot of time with our field leaders and advisors and one of the things I’ve always loved about that is they’re optimistic and energetic and all of those things that you would expect. But I also love the fact that they’re the closest to the client experience. They’re out there in the marketplace every day and they take such pride in making a difference in people’s lives. You know, people have so much financial anxiety. They have so many things that they’re worried about. And we have a great, trusted advisor who can give you a plan that gives you confidence. Obviously, it’s protecting you from the unknown and helping you invest your money and all of those things. But it’s the peace of mind that comes from that, that allows you to live a better life. So I just think what our advisors do every day is so inspiring and the ability to work with them and help them be great at what they do. It’s just, you know, it. Just gives me a ton of energy and there’s always more to do. 

Nicole Alvino: Yes, I love that. And part of the constant learning and growing, thinking about technology, AI, generative AI, how are you incorporating some of the newer technologies like Gen AI in what you’re doing, both for your people internally in the field, as well as to help guide that client experience?

Tim Gerend: Yeah, I, well, I think it’s a great question and not limited, I think, just to AI, but we’ve been in the, you know, in the middle of a multi year transformation, what, you know, was essentially an analog company to really becoming a digital and a technology company. And all that’s done, I think, is enhance the ability of our advisors to provide even more impact to their clients and an even better client experience. And what we’ve really been focused on is, I mean, our corporate strategy is really around client experience. It’s around the combination of. A trusted advisor, a personalized plan, the combination of risk management and wealth management together that we call Protect and Prosper. Plus, what’s really new is a rich digital ecosystem and always on service. And those were things that the insurance industry or financial services hadn’t always been great at. And what we’ve had the opportunity to do is sort of wrap that around what was always great about this company, which was our product and our advisors. And you can provide such a higher level of engagement. And one of the things that’s really been a focus for us is Not just uplifting the client experience, and probably every talk, every company you talk to probably has some kind of client experience strategy. But we’re also working to upskill the field experience because it’s really, again, as I mentioned at the outset, our advisors who create most of the most important moments for their clients. And so we have to make sure that client experience and the field experience from a technology perspective go hand in hand. And there’s a huge opportunity for us, not just with AI, but with data in general. Because what clients want and need, and I think deserve, is a personalized experience. What advisors want is efficiency in the, in the ability to scale that. So they can build like a profitable, effective business. And through technology, we can provide both efficiency and personalization. Now, we’re far from done. You know, we still have a lot of work to do on that transformation. But I think the promise of where we’re going and where we’re investing is huge. And so if I were to sort of Boil down to, like, where are we using it? Part is efficiency, because you can do things faster and cheaper, but there also is an element where you can provide much more personalization, so it’s not just sort of a stock plan, if you will, because everybody’s situation is unique, and they want a personalized experience, and I think that’s one of the great promises of technology, is to be able to bring those two together.

Nicole Alvino: Yeah, that’s exactly right. And when we think about personalization, sometimes I use the word even hyper personalization to get exactly the piece of information that experience in that right in that moment that matters both for your field employees and your clients. And we talk a lot about the close connection between that employee experience or that field experience and the client experience and that One can lead to another, a best in class employee experience leads to an incredible client experience. And if you think about our, in our consumer lives, the type of things that we’re given, they are hyper personalized and they know exactly what we want. I sometimes joke, Amazon knows what I want before I even know I know what I want. 

Tim Gerend: Yeah. Or your copy order or your playlist or whatever. It’s all super personal, hyper personalized in your words, right? Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. And I think that the chain of that is important because if you start with client experience, like you can’t disintermediate, if you will, in our case, like our advisors, our employees, because they’re the ones who create the experience. And so we’ve had to be really intentional in how we think about advisor facing technology in the relationship between that. And what we want the client experience to be. And I think what we’ve found is, you know, exactly what you suggested is true. If we can make it great and easy for our advisors, they’re going to make it great for our clients. 

Nicole Alvino: Yeah, exactly. That is very core to our mission. Our mission is actually to make the employee experience better at every moment that matters. And then obviously that drives not only peak performance in our own talent, but it translates to, in your case, driving your top line when you have an exceptional client experience that keeps people coming back to their advisors and trusting you year over year. 

Tim Gerend: Yeah, there’s a, like, I’ll call it a fulfillment piece to that too, because when I think about our advisors and their Productive capacity, if you will, is one of the most valuable assets we have as a company. And you want the productive capacity of your advisors and their team members to be focused on what matters most. Like, how can they be providing empathy and support and great advice for clients? You don’t want them messing around. with things that you could do much more efficiently with technology. And so I think it not only allows you to be like better, if you will, because it’s more efficient, but you also provide just a much more enjoyable and fulfilling work experience for your advisors because they’re spending time doing stuff that they love to do and that they’re great at and that really adds value.

Nicole Alvino: Absolutely. And it’s probably different for every person, back to the point about personalization, what’s going to get someone really invigorated in one part of the country or in one line of business might be completely different from somebody else. And so finding those moments along that individual employee journey, meeting people where they are with what they need to continue to invigorate them, excite them, so they’re, they’re best for all of your clients. Right on. That is great. And then kind of thinking about transformation, you’ve talked about transformation, you’ve talked about changing your own career as well as with the company, what’s next or as you think about the next horizon at Northwestern Mutual? 

Tim Gerend: Well, I’m, I’m super excited about what’s next. You know, I think we have. And this is, I’m sure, true at any company that’s gone through a transformation. At the beginning, it’s pretty scary because you have kind of like an idea of where you want to go, but it’s unproven and you’re not sure. And you try a lot of things that don’t work because that’s the nature of transformations. They’re just messy. And what’s really exciting for us at Northwestern Mutual is I think we’re starting to feel like we’re on the other side of that, meaning like we know who we are. We’ve got this great, you know, heritage, 166 years and going. But we also know where we’re going, and our go to market strategy is really clear, and we have a ton of momentum in the marketplace as our advisor force has been growing, and as our clients gravitate to this approach that’s really premised on financial planning, and so we just see opportunity all over the place, to grow and make it better. And I think the promise of technology like AI, what we’re going to be able to do with data, as an example, if you think about it, Northwestern Mutual, we know more about our clients than anyone else. We have all of their health information. We have all of their financial information, and we have everything you’d want to know about their hopes and dreams. And as a mutual company, like we don’t use that data and like sell it to somebody else. We only use that data to make them better off. And so I think we’re really just scratching the surface with what we’re going to be able to do with personalized financial planning to help people be more financially secure. We also have an unbelievable opportunity as we think about providing income for people in retirement because the power of integrated solutions, essentially insurance and investments together there. is so powerful and needed and people aren’t just relying on social security or their employer anymore. So we have a ton of things I think from a market perspective that I’m really excited about and again I think data and technology are a big piece of it. But what I’ll tell you I’m most excited about and this gets back to a little bit what we talked about before in terms of like Teamwork and the power of a team and working together. We have a really interesting relationship, as you might expect, between our home office and our field. And there’s always naturally some tension between the field and the home office or sales and management or whatever you want to call it. But we have a really unique and symbiotic relationship with our field force. And we do a lot of what’s called co creation. And that is where we have committees and associations and ad hocs, where we have our advisors and field leaders working really like. Hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder with my team members in New York and Milwaukee, creating the future. And we have such a strong alignment right now between our advisors and field leaders in our home office that the power of what we can do together as we think about designing and actually delivering on that next chapter is really exciting and it’s a ton of fun. And so I’m incredibly grateful for the volunteer efforts. Of all of our advisors and field leaders, again, they’re independent contractors. We don’t pay them to help out, they’re just helping out. But I think they’re so excited about what the promise is of where we’re going. They want to help us get there faster. And I think the energy we have between the home office and field working together. It’s as good as it’s been in my 20 years of the company, and it just makes me really optimistic and excited about the future. 

Nicole Alvino: Yeah, I love that. That’s a testament, obviously, to the connection that you’ve created between home office and the field, that culture of purpose, and your mission driven organization, obviously, the communication strategies that you’ve put in place, and I couldn’t agree with you more on the future of data. We actually Think about it as a data activation flywheel and getting more and more information. The more information you learn about, in our case it’s employees, we can serve up even more personalized experiences and really get to learn what makes individuals tick. And if we can give them those delightful, incredible experiences, that just continues to Make them reach their full potential as people and on the client experience side, continues to give them exactly what they need to plan for their family’s future. So the future is bright for sure. 

Tim Gerend: Yeah, just one quick note on that. I think the point on growing to your potential, I mean, that is so much sort of the feeling of our field of coming here and growing and like being as great as you can be in this business. And I just want to underscore your point because the power of data, not only is going to help our clients. But in addition to knowing more about our clients than anyone else, we also know more about our advisors businesses. You know, we have 8, 000 full time advisors out there, 20, 000 with team members. So as we get more data, we’re going to have more insight and understanding of how do you build a great business and what do you do? And so our ability to enable them to grow to their potential. As we harness the power of our own data, it’s also super exciting. 

Nicole Alvino: Exactly. So before we wrap up, I always like to ask my guest, one thing you always do and one thing you never do. 

Tim Gerend: Always and nevers are hard, especially as a former lawyer. There’s usually a caveat in there, right? I would say, and always is, I always have high expectations. And I’ll give credit to my dad for that one. And he, he had very simple advice to me as a kid. He said, people generally do what you expect, so you might as well have high expectations. And I think whether it’s my kids or the people I’m working with or our advisors, I think expecting the best of people, and then you end up, you know, encouraging them to get there. So one of the things I always try to do is always have high expectations. One of the things I try to never do is I try to never complain to my team. Now I complain to my wife plenty, but I just think the negativity and sort of the victim mindset of, you will, of complaining can be contagious. And I think as a leader, it’s our responsibility to set the tone. To be clear, I talk about things that are going wrong, mistakes or learning opportunities. You have to be willing to admit when you make a mistake. But by complaining I mean like blaming other people or sort of regretting your own circumstance. I just, I don’t like being around that. I don’t want to create that environment anywhere on my team or in my organization. So I try my best to save my complaints for others and not to complain to my team. So that’s my always and my never. 

Nicole Alvino: From a former litigator, we’ve got an always and a never. So, Tim, thank you so much. Where can our listeners find you? 

Tim Gerend: I’m on LinkedIn. So very easy to find there. You can just plug in my name, Tim Gerend, and Northwestern Mutual, and you can easily find it. I’m always happy to connect online, and we put a ton of content out there, not only about our field, but about what we’re doing in business. So that’s probably the easiest way to get me. And thanks again for the time, Nicole. I’ve really enjoyed it. It’s a great conversation. 

Nicole Alvino: Thanks for joining us. 

Narrator: Thank you for listening to this episode of Cruising Altitude. This episode is brought to you by Firstup, the company that is redefining the digital employee experience to put people first and the companies up by connecting every worker everywhere with the information that helps them do their best work. Firstup has helped over 40 percent of the Fortune 100 companies like Amazon, AB InBev, Ford, and Pfizer stay agile and keep transforming. Learn more at firstup.io