Best Insurance Employer 2021: Allianz (5* employer, large)

View from HR

Julie Harrison, chief HR officer, Allianz

Why do you think your employees have nominated you in this survey?

We’ve always put an emphasis on our culture and the development of our people but over the last year we’ve really demonstrated just how focused we are on creating  a great employee experience as well as a customer one. We want to create a place where employees can thrive and really believe that every moment matters on an employee journey. Even though we’ve all been working virtually we’ve stayed connected through things like our intranet, regular update calls from senior leaders, pulse surveys and wellbeing activities and challenges. We’ve been open and transparent throughout the pandemic and have still managed to foster a spirit of collaboration and co-creation.

We often talk about the talent and importance of our people but it isn’t just talk, we work really hard to have an inclusive and diverse company where everyone is valued. I hope employees have nominated us because they feel genuinely proud to work for Allianz.

What do you believe employees value the most?

Employees value our culture. Despite the size of the business we often get feedback from new starters about how pleasantly surprised they are that Allianz has a family feel. Creating that people first culture is in our DNA, we always try and lead with compassion.

We also really invest in learning and development, be that courses, mentoring, qualifications or secondments, so employees know they’ll be supported in their development plans and we’ll see the business benefit too.

Being part of the Global Allianz family, and now also welcoming LV into the fold, also means we’re making real impact on things like sustainability – being part of the bigger picture is very exciting and means that we’re always thinking about the best outcomes for customers and society.

Where does your HR strategy come from?

We work really closely with Allianz Group and our strategy evolves from global best practice perspectives as well as local experience and requirements.

It really comes down to looking at how we can enable our people to best serve our customers while also working somewhere amazing. We work with the business to consider all of this through a UK market lens and the process is iterative – employee views and feedback are a crucial element of our strategy and aside from formal surveys, my door, and that of my colleagues, is always open for people who have thoughts or ideas. Creating dialogue is so important.

How does this tie into your company values?

Our purpose is ‘We Secure Your Future’ and that reflects very much our values as an organisation – to put people at the heart of what we do, to be the best and to always be looking forward.

For customers insurance is about a promise and that’s the same for employees. We’re here to secure futures and by collaborating and supporting each other we can achieve that.

How does staff feedback affect HR decisions?

We’re in constant dialogue with employees through things like our engagement surveys, employee networks and feedback from events.

It’s really important to look at all angles before making decisions and our new working model is  a great example of using employee working groups to feed into our strategy.

We have an annual Global Allianz Engagement Survey that looks at the big picture and from that we’re able to look at trends across the whole Allianz world as well as drilling down to UK specific responses – it’s a great tool and where we see scores change over time we can work with that business area to address concerns. We also run regular UK specific pulse surveys which are also extremely useful – particularly over the last year people’s needs, moods and focus have really been tested and the surveys have given us excellent snapshots. The launch of corporate subscription to Headspace was as a result of an employee survey during lockdown and the feedback has been terrific.

Our employees know that decisions aren’t just made top down, there’s always consultation work involved to make sure varying perspectives and needs are taken into consideration. Co-creation is really important to us and we’re making this a focus in developing our new way of working post Covid.

How do you retain staff?

This is a combination of people and culture, learning and development opportunities and the knowledge that as part of Allianz Group your career aspirations don’t have to stop at the UK border.

People who are supported and happy in their environment tend to be more secure and confident to bring their whole selves to work. This is reflected in how long people stay with us.

Welcoming LV to the Allianz family has extended the opportunities even further and it’s genuinely exciting to see the sheer amount of talent we have across both brands choosing to make internal career moves.

Do you do anything differently from other insurance firms?

We’ve been around a long time and consistent vision and strategy means that we’re successful. However, we don’t rest on our laurels and we’re always looking to improve – this balance of heritage with a forward-looking approach is what makes us both a stable employer but also an exciting one.

Certainly, from a business perspective we know a lot of our employees really thrive when working with counterparts at Allianz Group or other in countries so although the UK market is our focus we can share and learn best practice from across the world.  

Where do you think HR is going in the future?

Like many other professions HR is now able to use technology to free up skilled professionals to engage with much more exciting projects. The future of HR is very bright as we embrace change and work out how to best support or indeed lead business developments. At Allianz we’re investing in our own skills development within HR so we’re well placed to deliver. I’m very keen on agile methodology so we’re taking a new approach to some of our projects for this year. In general, cross collaboration is going to become increasingly important as data and insight tools will open the doors to new strategy or communication activities and it’s really important that as HR professionals we’re leading the charge on that.

What new benefits are on the horizon? Will you be introducing these?

We’re always reviewing our benefits be that discounts, or health and wellbeing, right through to things like parental leave policies. New for 2021 was an extra day of holiday for every employee globally as a thank you for everyone’s hard work and resilience during 2020.

In your experience is recruiting and retaining in insurance different from other sectors? If so, how? 

The amount of career opportunities within insurance are almost never ending and so in that regard it’s no different from other sectors. We want talented people with a range of skills sets.

The only aspect that might be slightly different is making candidates aware of exciting jobs in things like cyber, data or AI that might not automatically come to mind when the word insurance is mentioned.

We want and need skilled underwriters, claims professionals but we also need people with IT and digital skills, marketing skills, operations skills, the list goes on.  We can offer career development support, it’s just up to us as an industry to get to a point where people see us destination employers rather than ‘falling into’ insurance.   

What advice would you give to other firms to replicate your success?

Be confident in your people and listen to them – they are your best brand ambassadors.

What will the ‘new normal’ look like for your employees in terms of office/home working after Covid?

Through our new work model, we’re introducing more flexibility for our employees. We’ve always had some people with flexible working patterns but the pandemic helped us to accelerate our thinking around what flexibility really means by giving us an unexpected business wide case study.

We’re using our learnings alongside employee feedback to shape a new approach to working at Allianz that empowers our people to make choices about what works for them while taking into account the operational needs of different business areas.

It’s still really important for us to have offices and of course our branch network but we see these spaces becoming much more of a place for collaboration, learning and networking rather than somewhere to sit and answer emails.  The new normal has the potential to be quite different and we’re really keen to build on everything we’ve learnt without losing the positive aspects of the pre-Covid office.