There are a lot of different levers you can pull. This includes overall leadership of product development and innovation, product line performance, risk selection standards, and underwriting. Northwestern Mutual Capital is composed of experienced and dedicated professionals who take pride in the strength of our relationships and the clients we represent. q(G;9)3G2e]PCb# &8.th3geRyLJ* It wasnt my first exposure to HR. John M. Grogan is responsible for the strategy and performance of the company's insurance businesses. Sources: Financial Advisor and InvestmentNews, April 2021, Financial Planning, August 2021. All of those things that youre crystallizing are all the things that you gave to me when I was in my role. /ca 1.0 << /PCSp 4 0 R Could you imagine Bill Belichick andy Reid or Bruce Arians who said, Special teams arent important. . Previously Don was the Chief People Officer of Apttus. Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance is a financial services company that provides its clients various insurance options and investment opportunities. A member of the company's Senior Leadership Team, he leads the Finance and Risk function responsible for the company's financial management and planning, budgeting, actuarial, investment risk and operations, enterprise risk management and resiliency. How do I get there faster, better and easier? What would you tell yourself? In this episode of Redefining HR, I spoke with Northwestern Mutual Executive Vice President and Chief HR Officer Don Robertson. Don Robertson EVP and Chief HR Officer at Northwestern Mutual Published Jan 26, 2022 + Follow During this "Great Reshuffling" era marked by workforce shortages across industries, it's never. If your mission and vision are motivators, and your company has the capacity to meaningfully change the world for the better you have a foundation to recruit, retain, develop, and inspire your talent. There are some underlying things Im looking for. ,,0 XA`@Z>\8)Uj3OtsFz2'4B bK;X&,= iK"0jDaJPbpMZ6kQ; # c&(<0mF*_Ty*V4bR|Ue$(Rb47l$t2Byf&QIGCzRGV)ZCg@=dF _~PBc?+!p=p\ PjdD{V$M.ASC1Fsr;42=7R9#uu>=@ _8VO4tIs^9MgYU@+A.qp|'H_Wm`3aL-UsS0`/Zo^u741X;xX[2 'M)Go-d Some of the things that I operate with are some of the things Ive talked about already. Reggieyiane Robertson. One of the reasons that I have the attitude about is because I was fortunate enough to work with one of the great talent multipliers of all time in business, Jack Welch in GE. endobj It was when Nancy was the Head of Enterprise Services at that time and I was preparing a deck. If you have never carried a bag as a sales leader and had a quota and held those kinds of things, youre not going to talk to those salespeople the way that I could because I understood the language, challenges and what they were going through. Northwestern Mutual. The first half of my career was not in HR. You have your best personality on and your right smile. Copyright 2023 The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, Milwaukee, WI. She looks like she is great adult supervision for you. Im in the gym five days a week. endobj Im going to give them both to you in advance because its not a got you. >> You must have had an entirely different eye on that talent as compared to your normal recruiting talent acquisition and HR business partner. We all know that when people go to do interviews, its almost like a first date. Its either you have it or you dont. Northwestern Mutual is the marketing name for The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company (NM), Milwaukee, WI (life and disability insurance, annuities, and life insurance with long-term care benefits) and its subsidiaries. /MediaBox [0 0 612 792] When you now are that business person who knows HR and youre working with the business, especially coming from sales, talent is everything. I was up in Dallas and I said, There are so many people that do approach it as a bolt-on. The Northwestern Mutual management team includes Eric Christophersen (Vice President CampusandEvent Experiences), Ann Yeung (CTO WealthandInvestments ManagementandVP Field Experience Engineering), and Lee Hurley (CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER) . I misread the situation. Im not talking about, I missed the deadline by a couple of days. Im talking about, especially in our function, you completely blew a tough conversation or you got yourself in trouble with somebody and ended up suing the company and you didnt handle it well. I had a major pull me aside and he said, Be good, be brief, be gone. That was it. Northwestern Mutual and its subsidiaries offer a comprehensive approach to financial security solutions including: life insurance, long-term care insurance, disability income insurance, annuities,lifeinsurance with long-term care benefits, investment products, and advisory products and services. Investment advisory and trust services are offered through Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Company (NMWMC), Milwaukee, WI, a subsidiary of NM and a federal savings bank. Were very data-driven. John E. Schlifske is chairman, president and chief executive officer of Northwestern Mutual, and is a member of the Board of Trustees. >> Your managers job is to help you achieve that., Managers are the guides to their employees to achieve their career growth. One of the most difficult things to help businesses understand is that the faster you can recognize what you need from a talent standpoint and put your talent on that, the faster you can accelerate your priorities. Executive VP & Chief Human Resources Officer . Don and George talk about how Don got into the HR space and what he's learned as an HR practitioner. 1 0 obj Don Robertson is the Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer, and a member of the Senior Leadership Team of Northwestern Mutual - a $30+ billion, Fortune 100 financial . endobj About Northwestern MutualNorthwestern Mutualhas been helping families and businesses achieve financial security for more than 160 years. Once youve done it after a week or two in that same location, all of a sudden, you start to master it. Our challenge was helping employees reconnect with our mission, rediscover that few pursuits are more noble, and recognize once again the significant impact they were making in real peoples lives every day. I owe her a tremendous amount. Excelling Beyond the Glass Ceiling No Adjectives Needed with Lisa Schreiber and Myrna Soto. Don and George talk about how Don got into the HR space and what hes learned as an HR practitioner. It has to be threaded in what you do. When I made that transition to HR, I had come out of being a consultant in the defense space in KPMG Consulting. This is a people business, and I can't think of a | 17 comments on LinkedIn Don Robertson on LinkedIn: Northwestern Mutual Recognized by Forbes as one of America's Best Large | 17 comments The products and services referenced are offered and sold only by appropriately appointed and licensed entities and financial advisors and representatives. Because so many people invested in me, Ive got to pay it to others twice as much. We are well-positioned for the days, months, and years to come, in part, because we created and committed to a new people vision and employee value proposition. Ive been doing this for many years and last time I checked, I still havent cornered the market on all the great ideas. How do you start getting there? 12 0 obj I try to get to know the person at an authentic level. )~GU(!h@LL):]4oME> L3bfLn("37L[afL`X/pMnp[%n*JJ|1nxBYUoUY511rpboqeM[7)y}u\W1@ ~yE_UO}XeU+PaeT| Don earned his bachelors degree in business administration from California State University in Fresno, where he currently serves on the Advisory Board for the Craig School of Business. Not all Northwestern Mutual representatives are advisors. When expanded it provides a list of search options that will switch the search inputs to match the current selection. Apple and the Apple logo are trademarks of Apple Inc. Google Play and the Google Play logo are trademarks of Google, Inc. What happened is I got in it and I realized my business background, my experience and what I had done was advantageous. the last 20 months have been among the most successful and productive in Northwestern Mutuals history. Thank you for your leadership, Don! Many of us have kids that think they know. The biggest lesson I would tell you is to get to know the people that think differently than you and that disagree with you often. /CSpg /DeviceGray They are some high-paced and solid leaders. Theres nothing on paper that would have said that I should have been the Head of HR for HR. Samuel Pudenz. Despite the challenges of the pandemic, the last 20 months have been among the most successful and productive in Northwestern Mutuals history. Extremely gratifying to see Northwestern Mutual selected by Forbes as one of America's Best Large Employers. Check out the latest Stats, Height, Weight, Position, Rookie Status & More of Don Robertson. 1 of the 2 of them was incessant. >> First and foremost, make sure that you spend a lot of time with the people that manage your people. Get Contact Info for All Departments Northwestern Mutual Org Chart by Seniority Marketing (509) Lee Hurley /F7 7 0 R Do you want to be in this area? Every conversation I have with that person is to help them achieve that. 11 0 obj I dont like the idea of having a talent management approach and then you have a DNI approach. 1 2 . People arent going to generally tell you, I got fired for X.. MILWAUKEE, Aug. 21, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Northwestern Mutual today announced the appointment of Don Robertson to senior vice president and chief human resources officer. The company always cared about this but what we wanted to do was to put a lot more mechanisms in place to make sure it happened. Ive tried a lot of different techniques over the years. What I try to do is get to the 3rd, 4th or 5th day when the person lets their hair down, What are they about? I typically try to ask about experiences that will cause that to go down because Im ultimately trying to look for 3 or 4 things, as I told you guys when I met with you. Believe it or not, I have lost every bit of sanity and Mike Cirelli talked me into a book too, which well probably be talking to you about your sin. The gist of it was this was right around the time when the HR function was starting to realize as a function that they needed to have people that understood the business as well as understanding the domain of HR. >> What are the strategies? He wrote 18 published novels. >> D6T P}] /CA 1.0 Select KiwiSaver Scheme is part of the Finance industry, and located in New Zealand. I hit 60, believe it or not, in June 2021. >> /Border [0 0 0] If you learn early in your career how to influence those kinds of people or at least how to understand them better so you can speak a common language, its a very powerful thing. Therefore, you become an environment thats known as developing talent. They have their top talent and they dont want to let them go because they cant think of, How am I going to succeed without that top talent? What you have to become is more of a thought about, Your job is not to just deliver on what youre doing now, but to develop people for the future and elevating in the organization.. Awards Conference & Dinner in NYC - one of the year's premier Theres no question that there isnt enough talent out there to do all the things that all the companies want to do. Its interesting that you say that youre a business person doing HR because I dont remember whether it was Tracy Keogh or Meg Whitman. Expert Adviser - Capital Portfolio Management at Transport for NSW for 11 months. /Subtype /Link All Rights Reserved. Did they have to twist your arm or were you like, This is the next new challenge and frontier where I can impact? What was it for you? The more window you have that you allow yourself to have to what youre going to need from talent, the faster you can start to deliver on your business strategies. You cant just be thinking about it from an acquisition standpoint. Fortunately, Ive had opportunities to resurrect. Ideally, what you will do over time is build your organization to be a talent engine so that it becomes second nature, but there are foundational elements that you have to put in place around talent succession planning, rising star analysis, talent management to career growth and career development. Every single person that works for me, every time I interact with them, Im always thinking in the back of my head, She wants that job. If you could become good at understanding different perspectives, peoples points of view and approaches, its going to make you more effective later on in life. I look forward to talking to you again soon. You were always like this. You have to approach the folks that youre privileged to have worked for you. When I was working with you, talent was always on my brain, How are we doing it? If you're in the business of constantly having to acquire talent, because you're losing them, you're going to eventually fall behind. Its just leaders are leaders. A-players do not want to work for B-players.. Yes, correct. Were you like me at that moment where theyre talking to you about HR and youre thinking, Did I do something wrong? Thats the context of the question. I did this thing and I screwed up. You think youve got it all figured out. Where you lose most of the time is your 5 to 10-year rock stars who look ahead and they dont see the opportunity and somebody calls them. I tell my team all the time, Tell me the punchline and if I have questions but dont take me through the pain. That was a big one. Two additional senior leadership appointments include: Evamarie Schoenborn was named president. endobj Its a long story how I got into HR. How hard could they be? I remember we were interviewing you for the book and you had some tough questions. Im looking for someone who has a good attitude because nobody wants to work with people that are negative, especially in this day and age. Its great to be here. Northwestern Mutual sells two types of term life policies: Annual renewable term life and level term life. Northwestern Mutual. << It came back with changes, Make those changes. endobj Thats the one advantage of not being with a crazy tech company. One is Im looking for, What difficulty or adversity have you dealt with in your life? I believe if people have dealt with those things, theyre going to be much better equipped to be able to describe how they did it. 4) Email . Don understands how to meet the needs of a diverse workforce while employing strategic thinking to deliver real results for Northwestern Mutual, its workforce, and its clients. I had no business being at the level I was at because I came over to a pretty high level but she knew I had the raw attributes. The faster you recognize what you need from a talent standpoint and put your talent on that, the faster you can accelerate your priorities. Robertson joins Northwestern Mutual after serving in human resources leadership roles at companies ranging from Fortune 50s to maturing start-ups. >> Phone . Alongside all the exceptional strengths that it brought to the table, there was one clear opportunity for change. M@bp6VCcT$*%R Nothing fuels business more that highly engaged people who support it. Best Talent: Youre not going to get to where you want to get to in your career because youre going to get trained. Mpb4 But this wasn't the case at Northwestern Mutual. When typing in this field, a list of search results will appear and be automatically updated as you type. They wanted someone to help the HR function help the sales organization from a development standpoint. I dont know if he listened to me. I make it okay to talk about a real failure because we all get these questions, Tell me something that didnt work. The number one thing I would leave you with is diversity and inclusion cannot be a hobby and a separate thing. One of the statistics we came up with is that CHROs are paid 1/3 less than their C-Suite counterparts. Thats when our teams got to work. What was striking to me is how well a lot of our leaders know the people that they come in contact with regularly but how great the talent was down in the organization that we didnt know very well. She recognized that I had a strong affinity for HR but also had the business and what I would call agility that she needed to help her transform the HR function at HP. I had fewer pointers there. I remember when you had to go present to Mark Hurd, you better be speaking at crisp. Investment brokerage services are offered through Northwestern Mutual Investment Services, LLC (NMIS) a subsidiary of NM, broker-dealer, registered investment advisor, and member FINRA and SIPC. We're still Liked by John Roberts Northwestern. Cameron Robertson has been working as a A and Executive Director. If you allow yourself as a company to be vulnerable, honest, open and transparent with your employees, they will be much more willing to work with you and wait for you. All right. Congrats Don way to lead in a tumultuous time !!! Here at Northwestern Mutual, we built and now consistently maintain 80%+ employee engagement levels across all our business units, across genders, across race, across tenure and more. You are taking five slides to say what you could say in one. There was nothing about the companys mission helping Americans make smart financial choices so their goals arent left to chance that needed to be fixed. On the contrary, a strong foundation was already in place one built over the companys storied 164-year history. Thats true but I dont ever remember sending you an email or a text that wasnt instantaneously received and I was anywhere on the globe at that time. ES had $22 billion annual revenue and 110,000 employees. Don Robertson (March 21, 1929 - March 21, 1999) was an American novelist. MILWAUKEE, Aug. 21, 2018 / PRNewswire / -- Northwestern Mutual today announced the appointment of Don Robertson to senior vice president and chief human resources officer. Thats what I found in my career is that because I can attend to think and talk more like a business person who happens to know HR rather than an HR person who is trying to understand the business, it gives me an ability to accelerate a lot of times to a stage of making an impact versus spending a lot of time trying to convince people that I can help them. There are the talent strategies in between those two of how youre going to address it. You have to be a student of the business. Don Robertson, welcome to the show. Its the one thing that we have done well. Anytime were doing slating or talent management, its got to have that DNI lens then and there, not afterward and you dont like the outcomes and you try to go back and reconstruct something. /URI (http://www.prnewswire.com/) They were like, Do you know what we do? I said, Yes, I used to do what you did. Lets figure out how to do this better together.. What would you say to companies that dont put talent first? With its level term life coverage, you can choose between a 10- or 20-year term length. We combine the expertise of our financial professionals with a personalized digital experience to help our clients navigate their financial lives every day. The next thing you know, theyre jumping at something when you probably could have had great opportunities for them had you been intentional about it. 5 0 obj One of the biggest challenges that businesses that Ive been associated with always have been challenged with is businesses have very ambitious agendas and strategies. Whatever happens with special teams, well just deal with. Its about the ecosystem and the full team that you put together. Ill put it that way. The third thing is to try to give your employee base as much context as you possibly can. 4 0 obj Northwestern Mutual is part of the Insurance industry, and located in Wisconsin, United States. In fact, one of the things about the chef versus the baker is Bina was a great example of that. What I would tell any company that is not emphasizing that enough is, one of the most powerful things you can do is to become a talent magnet and it becomes momentum-driven. /Resources 14 0 R /CSp /DeviceRGB Aditi Javeri Gokhale holds executive accountabilities for the company's strategy to drive growth, competitiveness, and relevance. You also have to be thinking about it from a development, growth and retention standpoint. Northwestern Mutual ranks 104 on the 2018 FORTUNE 500 and is recognized by FORTUNE as one of the "World's Most Admired" life insurance companies in 2018. Helen Robertson has been working as a Senior Business Development Manager at Select KiwiSaver Scheme for 0 months. How can you assure that you have the best talent for your company? We had pages and pages. Robertson earned his bachelor's degree in business administration from California State University, Fresno where he currently serves on the Advisory Board for the Craig School of Business. There are investments the business wants to make. Theres a reason why people have worked for me now in 3, 4 or 5 companies and its because they believe that I looked at it that way. Its oftentimes not what you want them to fill it in with. See Profile. Before Apttus Don was the CHRO for Sutherland Global Services. Theres nothing worse than candidates and worst when Ive interviewed executives that tap dance or theyre dancing around it. The more that weve had experiences in life that allow us to master certain types of skills, the faster youre going to be able to assimilate to whatever new environment youre in. Of product development and innovation, product line performance, risk selection,. Meg Whitman not going to address it whatever happens with special teams, well deal. If I have questions but dont take me through the pain me through the pain market on all things! Having a talent management approach and then you have your best personality on and your right.... 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