When your business is adding security and protection to customers’ lives, you want to know you are not just meeting those goals, but that your customers trust you to do so. You also want to know that your employees have a similar trust and satisfaction in being a part of your organization. In 2024- 2025, Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America (Allianz Life) fine-tuned its learning and development (L&D) services so customers would come away with a better-than-ever experience and employees would feel that Allianz Life is an inclusive place to work. At the same time, the company’s L&D leaders continued to move the bar ever higher in helping the organization to reach its goals in operational efficiencies.
Inclusivity, in which an organization recruits, values, and develops employees from a wide spectrum of backgrounds and experiences, can be a strategic advantage in addition to the right thing to do. The past year saw Allianz Life make big gains in creating a more inclusive environment for team members.
To enhance inclusivity, Allianz Life implemented a First Year Employee Experience onboarding program, transforming its approach from a one-day orientation to a comprehensive five-month journey designed to set employees up for success and foster a sense of belonging. “Our First Year Employee Experience onboarding program introduces new hires to our culture, values, and business through a structured, multi-touch onboarding process,” says Vice President of Learning & Development Bill Ryan.
Key components of this program include:
- Day 1 Orientation: Facilitated b y L earning & Development, Day 1 covers Allianz Life’s mission, vision, values, and ethical culture, with guest speakers from senior leadership. Other elements include a cohort lunch to build their network with other new joiners, IT personalization time, and a hands-on activity to build comfort with the suite of resources available to them following their first day via the company’s New Employee Welcome hub.
- Benefits Overview: A dedicated session during the first week ensures employees understand their comprehensive benefits package and available support resources.
- Culture & Connections Series: The three-part series highlights foundational elements of Allianz Life’s culture, including recognition, volunteerism, community engagement, inclusion, and sustainability initiatives.
- Business Acumen Series (Allianz Life Foundations): The three sessions focus on Allianz Life, the products it sells, and the importance of its regulatory environment.
- Leadership Engagement: Interactive Q&A sessions with Allianz Life’s CEO and Executive Leadership Group build transparency and foster connection.
- Manager Support: Enhanced onboarding communications, tool kits, and community calls help managers guide their new hires effectively.
The program is delivered through both in-person classroom sessions and virtual/hybrid options to accommodate remote employees. “We also implemented a robust listening strategy, collecting feedback at four key milestone dates in the first-year journey to capture actionable feedback and enable work to continuously enhance the new employee experience,” Ryan says.
As of Day 30 of this program, 96 percent of 2025 hiring managers reported their employee was off to a successful start, exceeding the L&D team’s 90 percent goal. Perhaps even more impressive is the significant reduction in voluntary first-year employee turnover year-over-year the company saw after implementing this program. Allianz Life reports that its current total company turnover rate is now below the industry average of 12 percent.
INVESTING IN CUSTOMER SERVICE AND OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY
Two of Allianz Life’s key goals last year were to improve the customer experience and the efficiency of its operations. Its recent L&D investments helped power the achievement of those goals.
In staffing, for example, the company invested in its Enterprise Operations learning capabilities by creating a dedicated learning function focused on customer service. “Most of this team had been centralized under the corporate learning function,” Ryan explains. “The team has expanded and is now one step closer to the customer by reporting directly into our Enterprise Operations (i.e., customer service) division. This investment and shift reflect an ongoing focus around the customer experience (CX) and demonstrates our company’s continued investment in CX.”
Meanwhile, Allianz Life made strategic investments to improve the company’s learning processes and technologies. Allianz Life invested in its overall learning communication and deployment process by shifting to a set quarterly deployment schedule for all required learning to help pace the organization quarter by quarter through required learning. “We also invested in the communication process required to tackle the business issue of helping our employees and leaders get their arms around everything that’s both required and elective,” Ryan says.
Another key investment, Visier Learning, gave the company’s leaders more ways to measure and quantify employee learning gains. The company had already deployed Visier People Analytics; in 2025, it invested in rolling out Visier Learning, Ryan says. “This now puts all relevant learning data at the fingertips of leaders (and eventually employees) to help monitor completion of required learning and progress toward attainment of annual required learning hours.”
Yet another key learning investment was SkillUp, a global Allianz initiative that provides every role in the global company of more than 150,000 employees with a set of skills relevant for their position. “This is a great undertaking to create the global skill taxonomy, assign the relevant set of skills for each position, and implement a skill technology solution, allowing employees to see the set of skills for their position and to rate their proficiency in each skill,” Ryan emphasizes.
OPTIMIZING AI
Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) have opened new opportunities to enhance operations. Allianz Life is preparing employees to help the organization be at the forefront of this technology usage. All employees are required to complete 11 hours of digital/data learning, including AI topics. Leaders also have a required three-hour program focused on building their AI and data capabilities.
Allianz Life’s AI curriculum is delivered through multiple formats:
1. Live programming: Interactive sessions in a global learning cohort called AI Run connect employees across the organization for shared learning and discussion; there are also local sessions tailored to Allianz Life’s specific business needs. “These local programs ensure that employees receive relevant, hands-on training directly connected to the challenges and opportunities within our organization,” Ryan says.
2. On-demand learning: Employees can access tailored programs that match their individual needs and skill levels, ensuring relevant and accessible content for everyone.
AI content is organized and sequenced around these topics:
- AllianzGPT (the organization’s custom AI assistant)
- Prompt engineering
- Generative AI basics
- Generative AI and insurance
- Generative AI platforms, applications, and use cases
- Standards for ethical AI usage
In addition, Allianz Life incorporates AI learning into other engagement events throughout the year:
- Each of the company’s four quarterly Connect & Learn days features live training on AI and related technology topics.
- The annual AI Innovation Week includes organization- wide keynotes and special-interest sessions from subject matter experts.
- The Data & AI Fan Club is an active community with quarterly programming on timely AI- and data-related topics.
To help employees orient to the scope of all these AI training and engagement opportunities, Allianz Life maintains the Data and Analytics Academy—a hub SharePoint site that broadly presents the curricula as two discrete themes: Generative AI and Data Literacy, plus a page dedicated to joining the company’s Data & AI Fan Club.
NO RESTING ON THEIR LAURELS
“Looking ahead to 2026 and beyond, we’re focused on advancing a future-ready learning culture that blends innovation with simplicity,” Ryan says. “We’ll continue building on the strong foundation of essential training and career development while introducing new initiatives designed to personalize learning, leverage technology, and prepare employees for what’s next.”
To reach those goals, Allianz Life is planning to:
- Implement enhancements and new tools to its career development portal, Career Compass.
- Continue to build out its critical skill academies, expanding offerings in areas such as data, AI, and leadership to ensure employees are equipped for future roles.
- Leverage digital upskilling, continuing to strengthen employees’ digital fluency and confidence with emerging technologies.
- Implement onboarding experience enhancements for new employees and new leaders.
- Utilize an interactive AI coaching tool on a simulation- based platform for sales teams, plus digital and learning career coaches for all employees.
- Expand the professional designation list for tuition assistance.
Ryan says the company is intent on a path of continuous improvement, noting, “our goal is to make learning more impactful, accessible, and aligned with both business priorities and individual career growth.”