Talent and Skill Development
Talent and Skill Development
Professional growth is a prominent driver of well-being and performance. MetLife aims to give every colleague the tools, resources and opportunities they need to grow their career. We create personalized learning experiences through a combination of virtual, hybrid and in-person learning and development opportunities, where colleagues can network, collaborate and learn from each other.
Across the company, we encourage colleagues to work with more agility. We encourage colleagues to complete online Agile training, designed to help create stronger alignment across teams, enhance efficiency and position ourselves to raise the bar for our people, customers and communities.
With ongoing artificial intelligence (AI) developments, we recognize how transformative technology is when combined with human oversight and direction. As a result, we are equipping our colleagues with AI education and providing the upskilling needed to successfully drive a responsible AI strategy and prepare for the roles of tomorrow.
Learning, Development and Mobility
Our approach to professional development incorporates structured feedback conversations, where colleagues and their managers discuss where the employee is most effective, areas they can improve and how the managers can be most supportive. Colleagues and their managers then use our online career development platform to set performance and development goals and create career profiles that reflect their experience and aspirations.
Our Growing@MetLife campaign showcases the many resources available to support colleagues’ development. In its second year, Growing@MetLife emphasized the importance of career conversations with managers that lead to skills-based learning. We encouraged colleagues to identify “focus skills” and create a corresponding development plan, using the personalized resources generated in MyLearning. Approximately 8,800 employees entered focus skills in MyLearning in 2023, up 243% from 2022. Our career development efforts contributed in part to career-related scores in MyVoice increasing two points year-over-year and scoring eight points higher than industry benchmarks.
In addition to direct manager support, MetLife colleagues have access to resources that support formal and experiential skill development and learning objectives. The MyLearning platform provides access to digital learning resources such as articles, books and videos, as well as webinars and courses. When employees include focus skills in their MyLearning profiles, the platform leverages AI-based recommendations to personalize learning resources to meet their aspirations.
Our digital talent marketplace, MyPath, provides employees experiential learning opportunities and empowers them to manage their development through strategic networking and participation in projects. The platform uses AI‑based recommendations to match employees to opportunities based on their skills, experiences and ambitions, driving internal talent mobility and development. Now in its third year, MyPath is available globally and in seven languages.
To further personalize development, we piloted Coaching@MetLife, a program which certified over 100 employees in 21 countries as internal coaches. Coaching sessions have focused on topics including skills development, career exploration, problem solving and job transitions. Coaching@MetLife will be implemented in 2024 to make quality coaching services available to every employee.
Mandatory training also helps colleagues stay up to date with the latest on our regulatory requirements; learn how to protect each other, the company and our customers; and drive key MetLife priorities. Please see Responsible Governance for additional mandatory training data.
8,000+ new users
registered for MyPath in 2023, and we surpassed
9,500 project role assignments globally since implementation.
Forging a New Career Path with Help from MyPath
Having spent several years in marketing, including two years in the field at MetLife, Caitlyn Wallace (right) was pondering the question: What would make you want to come back to work after vacation? After some soul searching, she knew the answer. “I wanted to shift my career,” Caitlyn said. “And I was pretty sure I wanted that career to be in Human Resources (HR).” Caitlyn saw a perfect opportunity on MyPath, but the position required the applicant to be in HR. Nonetheless, she decided to reach out to the project owner to express her interest. They welcomed her to the project.
Caitlyn spent seven months on the project, working on areas such as workforce and succession planning, mentoring and coaching employees. “Meeting with people in HR helped me to connect the dots,” she said. “I knew I was interested in HR, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do.” She added that getting to know employees from different teams was also a big help.
From there, she worked with her mentor to showcase her new skills in an application for a position in HR. The rest is history, and today Caitlyn is an HR content lead on the Employee Experience and Care team.
Building Strong Leaders
MetLife is committed to providing colleagues a high-quality experience with their managers.
Our program to develop leaders, Leading the Future, features a speaker series, on-demand training, peer-to-peer networks and live workshops. It supports over 5,500 people leaders.
Feedback from colleagues is a proven method to help leaders understand their strengths and opportunities for improvement. To strengthen leadership development, we introduced the Leader Expectations Tool, a survey for MetLife people leaders to receive candid feedback from their team members on how well they demonstrated the behaviors critical to engagement and performance. After a successful pilot in 2022, we launched the tool to over 4,300 managers in 2023.
MetLife’s INDEAVOR program is an immersive team-learning experience focused on tactics that lead to greater trust, inclusion and collaboration. INDEAVOR takes inclusion beyond the individual to improve team performance. The program, available to teams globally, now includes a psychological safety module.
