Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America understands the significance of technology in its employees’ daily work. It has the potential to simplify tasks, boost productivity, and foster collaboration. However, to experience these benefits, employees first need to be aware of the tools at their disposal and feel confident using them.
The company’s Fit4IT program is dedicated to providing a wide variety of learning options to help employees upskill on the technology tools in their toolbox and find ways they can adapt those tools to improve how they work.
Program Details
The Fit4IT program provides training to 100 percent of the company (all 18 business units). Throughout each month, Allianz Life regularly offers virtual instructor-led classes that provide hands-on practice for tools employees either don’t yet use regularly or don’t know the full potential of, such as M365 Teams, OneNote, SharePoint, Outlook, and Whiteboard.
Additional virtual instructor-led courses around digital and data skills offered as special learning sessions have included topics such as Power BI, artificial intelligence (AI), and prompt engineering.
In addition to the instructor-led courses, Allianz Life offers curated on-demand resources and courses employees can take at their own pace around technology tools and topics.
All employees have an annual goal of 11 hours of tracked Fit4IT learning, but which learning opportunities they participate in under the Fit4IT umbrella is up to them.
With the ever-evolving technology landscape, Allianz Life is continuously developing new ways for employees to “Get Fit4IT.” A major focus last year was AI. The Data Science team launched LifeGPT, a generative AI (genAI) solution specifically for Allianz Life that is a secure alternative to ChatGPT. The team made a concentrated effort to upskill employees on the concepts, uses, and benefits of AI and this tool, including launching the following opportunities (all of which count toward Fit4IT learning goals):
- A quarterly, meeting-free Connect & Learn Day, where the company offered a variety of Fit4IT sessions, including AI-focused options such as AI Innovation Day and Your New Virtual Assistant: Prompting with Allianz LifeGPT
- A Data & Analytics Academy, providing curated learning resources and free DataCamp access to all employees, which features learning tracks around genAI
- A Data & AI Fan Club, which offers employees the chance to learn from their colleagues who are data science experts about the latest trends and emerging technologies, see demos of LifeGPT, and discuss use cases
Allianz Life reinforces Fit4IT courses by providing additional resources for participants to dive deeper on their own, including Degreed pathways. This includes “learning nudges” sent to participants two weeks after regularly offered classes, which provide an additional video or short class to take about a particular tool, reminders of key takeaways from class, best practices, and additional tips.
Results
Providing employees opportunities to upskill on technology tools helps drive adoption. The most recent report for M365 tools showed the following adoption rates:
- Total Adoption: 54 percent
- Teams: 56 percent
- SharePoint: 46 percent
These results reflect the fact that a portion of employees do not yet have access to Teams due to FINRA licensing restrictions, and Allianz Life’s new SharePoint rollout is still in progress.
Allianz Life believes employees’ ability to gain a better understanding of tools available to them and how they can leverage technology in their role contributes to employee satisfaction. The company achieved an Allianz Engagement Survey (AES) score of 78 percent on the Work Well Index (WWi+)—which includes questions around access to technology and training to build skills for the future. This is one point higher than the U.S. external benchmark. Notable responses in this category included:
- 86 percent responded positively to “I have access to the resources I need to do my job effectively…e.g., materials, equipment, technology,” which is a three-point increase from the previous year
- 82 percent responded positively to “The learning and development I receive help me to develop the necessary skills for the future.” The company saw an increase to 89 percent on this question on a recent pulse survey.
