Reshaping Talent Strategies With Northwestern Mutual EVP and CHRO Don Robertson đ§
In this episode of Redefining HR, I spoke with Northwestern Mutualâs Executive Vice President and Chief HR officer, Don Robertson.
Donâs career started in finance, where he became a certified public accountant, followed by several years in sales and business operations. But about 20 years into his career, as Don was leading a sales organization at Hewlett-Packard, he was asked to oversee a sales development program. This program quickly found itself placed under HR.
âOne of my mentors, Marcello Perez de Alonso, was the head of HR at Hewlett Packard. She really wanted people in the HR organization that actually had a business mindset. And her strong value was, HR really should support the business and drive the business,â Don says.
While this wasnât the career path Don expected, heâs grateful for it, and heâs been in HR ever since.Â
Taking a New Approach to Talent Strategy
One of the most significant changes Iâve seen in HR is how the industry views attraction, engagement, and development. Today, HR leaders are increasingly focusing on skills instead of roles and job titles.Â
Northwestern Mutual has embraced this approach, looking to drive talent decisions based on skills and capabilities, which âreally levels the playing field and takes a lot of the hierarchy out of things,â Don says.
To support this, Northwestern Mutual has begun moving away from a job requisitions approach and toward talent pools. âItâs much more about the skill and the experience that you have than the title you may carry or who you may know,â Don says.
Don is leading the HR function to think differently about talent, job roles, and hiring, and he wants the entire business to think differently about this, too.
âWeâre actually working with business leaders and really defining what the critical success factors and skills and experiences that role needs to have,â Don says is. âAnd then weâre designing a career pathing process that kind of matches against skills and capability, rather than roles and titles and levels.â
This new way of thinking also affects how Northwestern creates career mobility within the organization.
âWe created an internal talent marketplace, where we'll look at opportunities and roles and skills, and we'll then look at people in our system that are interested in that, that are highly regarded and weâll match that up,â Don says.
Leveraging People Analytics for the Business
One of the pillars of modern HR is people analytics. At Northwestern Mutual, Don and his team utilize data in many ways to make intelligent decisions.Â
âWe do a lot of employee surveys, we get feedback, and we do a lot of correlations between data in our surveys and data in what we see in the organization. We build data into our metrics, and weâre very outcome- and metric-oriented,â Don says.Â
Though data can be disruptive, it can also help leaders have difficult conversations about decisions that affect real peopleâs real lives. The key is to ask, âHow do you be data-informed versus data-led?â Don says. â And I think maybe that's the art of understanding how and where to ask the right questions to get the right data to support the right decisions.â
Maintaining Engagement Through the Pandemic
During the Great Resignation or Great Reshuffle, engagement for many companies significantly dropped. But this wasnât the case at Northwestern Mutual. But because its culture puts people first and prioritizes transparency and authenticity.
âWe are very focused on letting our employees know whatâs going on,â Don says. âWeâre very honest with them about the challenges we have. And make it very clear to them how much we value them.â
Throughout the pandemic, Northwestern Mutual has tried to meet employeesâ needs, whether it was care packages, extra vacation days, or virtual celebrations. The important thing, Don says, is to show how much you care about human connection.
âWe donât have a product; in a sense, we sell what we do. Itâs our people that make the difference for us,â Don says. âAnd so I know that a lot of companies say that, but in our case, we really spend a lot of energy and time on it.â