From internships to continuous learning opportunities for employees, Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company (www.northwesternmutual.com) has received numerous accolades for its training and development initiatives.
Last fall, Northwestern Mutual’s financial representative internship program earned a top 10 spot nationwide for the 16th consecutive year in the 2012 Vault Guide to Internships. “We’re extremely proud of our internship program, which we consider a cornerstone of our recruiting efforts and one of the key drivers behind our long track record of being able to attract exceptional talent to the company,” said Steven C. Mannebach, Northwestern Mutual’s vice president of Field Growth & Development.
Mannebach said the internship program is a “win-win” both for the Milwaukee-based company and interns. “We’re able to offer a real-world and unique experience to candidates, which we believe is the most valuable way to learn and grow in a career that can last a lifetime. At the same time, we get an opportunity to find and train the best and the brightest early in their careers,” he explained.
The most effective and cost-efficient way to provide safety training to your workforce—Try a demo of BLR’s remarkable TrainingToday at no cost or obligation.
Launched in 1967, the internship program provides both hands-on training and real-life experience to participants—many of whom are later hired by the company. In fact, Northwestern Mutual reported that many of its most successful financial representatives are former interns, as is nearly half of its senior field management.
In selecting the top 10 internship programs, Vault editors considered many factors, including mentorship availability, career advancement opportunities, intern involvement/capacity for learning, compensation, and industry clout and work culture. Northwestern Mutual’s program received rave reviews—with 98 percent of surveyed interns indicating that the program was “instrumental or very helpful to their future careers.”
Northwestern Mutual was also named to Training magazine’s most recent “Training Top 125” list. The winners were selected based on a variety of factors, including “financial investment in employee development, the scope of development programs, and how closely such development efforts are linked to business goals and objectives,” according to Training.
“Northwestern Mutual has a long history of strength and stability, and our employees and financial representatives know that our commitment to providing exceptional training will take them to where they want to go, both professionally and personally,” said Mannebach.
Try a demo of BLR’s remarkable award-winning Training Today at no cost or obligation. Includes the Workplace Safety library. Get the details.
The company’s training and development programs include Fastrack Sales School, which the company described as “a blended learning program which provides financial representatives with interactive training resources designed to help them develop the confidence and skills needed to become successful representatives of Northwestern Mutual.”
“Our Mutual Experience,” which is the company’s employee-development program, “provides an in-depth and consistent approach that seeks to guide and foster employee development—from the first day they join the company through all phases of their career,” the company explained.
“Our appearance among Training magazine’s top 125 reinforces what we have known all along—that Northwestern Mutual is a great place to launch and grow a career,” said Jo Eisenhart, the company’s senior vice president of Human Resources.