NORTHWESTERN MUTUAL / EMPLOYEE & CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE
Put people at the center of change.
Returning to the office and choosing a new employer are different decisions. Both become easier when an organization understands what people need to feel supported.
My role: Employee experience strategy, candidate research, and careers-site strategy.
People at Northwestern Mutual · Employee portrait from NM’s careers website ↗
01 / BACK TO THE OFFICE · NEW YORK & MILWAUKEE
A return worth looking forward to.
After COVID lockdowns, returning to the office meant more than changing location. Employees had built new routines around family, home, and pets. Northwestern Mutual’s welcome-back initiative needed to recognize what they were being asked to change.
The insight: A warm welcome means more when it addresses the practical and emotional realities of coming back.
I developed the Back to the Office strategy for Northwestern Mutual’s New York and Milwaukee offices, balancing opportunities to reconnect with support for the adjustments employees faced.
Reconnect: Welcome-back parties gave colleagues time to rebuild relationships.
Include families: Experiences acknowledged the people and responsibilities beyond the workplace.
Consider pets: Pet-care events addressed the difficulty of leaving animals at home after months together.
Make room to recharge: Massage chairs in a spa-like setting offered a place to unwind during the workday. The space became a permanent workplace feature.
The strategy treated empathy as a set of concrete choices, from the first welcome to a lasting place to take a break.
02 / CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE · CAREERS-SITE STRATEGY
Help candidates picture a future here.
Northwestern Mutual also needed to make its careers experience compelling to a new generation of candidates, particularly technology talent whose expectations might not align with their perceptions of a financial services company.
I researched candidate needs, brand perceptions, and the hiring journey to define a more useful role for the careers site: a guide that helped people understand the opportunities and navigate their next step.
The strategy reframed the site as a concierge, with an inclusive, responsive experience that answered candidates’ questions and helped them see where they could belong.
My role: Candidate research and experience strategy. GMR Marketing / Omnicom.
View the Northwestern Mutual careers-site strategy excerpt ↗
Careers-site strategy proposal · GMR Marketing
Visit Northwestern Mutual’s careers site ↗