▍Background

With more than 50 years of experience, Symetra elevates people's lives through retirement, employee benefits and life insurance products. The company is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and has approximately 1,200 employees in offices nationwide.

“Collaborative skills are critical to our employees' success” said Anne-Marie Diouf, vice president of Human Resources at Symetra. “They’re becoming even more important as we work tightly with our field staff to continue to strengthen our business.

▍Solutions

The first step was to pilot Fierce Conversations with Symetra's executive team. The hands-on nature of Fierce workshops and tools helped illustrate how they could support Symetra^“Rules of Engagement.”

Next, the Symetra HR team added Fierce Conversations to its manager onboarding program. This not only sets expectations early on, it also provides concrete, easy-to-use and shared models for respectful CONFRONTATION, COACHING, DELEGATION and TEAM conversations.

Workshops are introduced in a tiered fashion. Ideally, managers of others are the first audience, followed by the general employee population. This way the Ianguage is familiar, and managers are prepared to answer questions and support learning.

Because reflection and practice are critical to the learning process, Symetra^ Fierce learners revisit the foundation each time they move into a new model.

▍Results

New and long-term employees are becoming more open about sharing knowledge and more curious about uncovering different perspectives. Feedback is no Ion ger only a top-down expectation. Open communication between peers, among intact teams and across departments is becoming the new expectation.