Northwestern Mutual Insurance

Corporate Employee Inovation

Northwest Mutual (NW) is the world’s third largest mutual insurance company. It has over $770 billion dollars under management and policy face value of over $1 trillion. The company has 4,500 employees in its Milwaukee headquarters – it is over 150 years old. NW implemented a phased roll-out of Idealink^TM - Phase 1 lasted six-months and saw the implementation of the system to collect and process cost-saving and cost-avoidance ideas - Phase 2 lasted six months and saw the addition of revenue-generating ideas - Phase 3 saw the addition of employee-referal ideas. NM's Ideas@Work initiative is in its fourth year. Metrics for the most recent fiscal year reveal that the system is alive and well - in its third year of operation, and with a new manager at the helm, it has delivered record returns - the highest yet.

The followings compounded statistics provide an overview of the performance NM has achieved:

• Audited metrics for the period of 2004/09/15 to 2007/10/09
• Average Employee Participation Rate out of 4,500 employees: 68%
• # of ideas submitted: 5,320
• Net ROI to total program cost (Internal Rate of Return program-to-date): 609%

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