Customer delight

Case studies

Allianz 360-degree feedback tool

Allianz, a major insurer in the UK, uses 360-degree feedback to support its leadership development programme. Trevor Smith, Training and Development Manager at Allianz, has brought about measurable behavioural change through these programmes. He advocates investing time in face-to-face contact with leaders to get results.

360-degree feedback is an integral feature of helping UK leaders at Allianz to understand themselves better. Today, it’s directed at a leadership population of over 400 managers who are based mainly in the UK but also in an offshore location in India.

All managers at Allianz are introduced to the 360 process through leadership workshops. On completion of the survey, a second workshop encourages them to share the outcomes in discussion with peers, which helps them to interpret the feedback and agree development actions.

Working with ETS, Allianz has created a solution that enables them to release 360 reports to co-incide with the workshops, which had previously been an administrative challenge. Allianz is also able to monitor feedback and to run reports on groups of managers’ scores over time.

Trevor describes ETS as fulfilling two roles:

The first was IT infrastructure: we wanted to be able to draw off our own reports and summary data. Also, ETS gave us best practice advice around handling 360 surveys.

The initiative is demonstrably successful. Through the 360 and other surveys such as staff attitude, Trevor is able to describe a good picture of the perceived strengths and weakness of the management population by division. The ETS tool means that he has been able to compare perception levels from the first two years that the 360 was implemented with the two most recent years. He reports a clear improvement in perceptions in all four competency clusters (setting direction, drive improvements, mobilise people and make decisions), which is affirmed by the results of the most recent staff survey. From a subjective point of view, the management population is much more appreciated by people around them.

Talking about why ETS was chosen for the project, Trevor said:

The key thing that sold me all the way through was the focus on customer service. ETS is one of the most customer-focused organisations that I’ve come across. That’s why the relationship has continued to this day. Even four years down the route, I still get the same instant response that I did in the early days.

What next for the programme? Trevor describes leadership as a continual journey. All managers complete a 360 survey every 2 years. This is an integral element of our leadership development programme to identify strengths and development needs and align to a broad range of development opportunities to continually enhance capabilities.