Allianz Global Investors
How AllianzGI Enhanced Its Onboarding Strategy
The tools we were using for attracting new hires and appealing to current employees were based in the past, rather than current day. Interactive video enabled us to appeal to the millennial generation, and show our tenured employees that we are up to date with technology and open to innovation.
Tony White
Head of Learning & Development and Talent Management in Europe, Allianz Global Investors
About Allianz Global Investors
Allianz Global Investors is a diversified investment management firm and one of the companies held by the parent company within its global portfolio Allianz Group. The Allianz Group is one of the world’s foremost financial service providers with 83 million customers in more than 70 countries.
The goal
To confront the challenging misconceptions of the financial services industry, AllianzGI wanted to create an immersive experience that revealed the company’s organizational culture, work environment, and onsite facilities more deeply. AllianzGI’s goal was to increase the number of quality recruits, raise brand awareness, and address the industry’s challenges with millennials and the generation gap—all while promoting its value propositions.
The challenge
1. Recruiting new talent
Just as attracting talent to the larger financial services industry is an uphill climb, recruiting is also a substantial challenge. Similar to other industry firms, AllianzGI is working to dispel negative and widespread impressions of banking and financial services.
2. Broadening the talent pool
In the same way that everyone competes for high-potential talent, AllianzGI is working to broaden its talent pool by showing qualified people—from both inside and outside the financial sector—that their skills are applicable to the company’s culture, goals, and service delivery capabilities.
3. Addressing millennial challenges and the generation gap
The AllianzGI team specifically wanted to use learning approaches and video technologies that would appeal to younger millennial recruits. In doing so, the team also wanted to appeal to longer-tenured employees who would find video learning approaches fun and engaging.
The solution
“The best way to accomplish our goals is to tell a story,” said Tony White, Head of Learning & Development and Talent Management at AllianzGI. “[To] show that our work environment is fun, exciting, and innovative.”
To do this, the AllianzGI team created an interactive game that gives players the ability to experience a day in the life of a portfolio manager. With the goal of successfully managing their funds, the experience awards the player points for strategic, well-researched decisions. Players can also lose points for making rushed, uninformed decisions.
Interactive video has been shown to increase attention, engagement, satisfaction, and time spent watching. In fact, according to a recent article by the Matrix Blog, “making the learners interact with the video—even through a simple click or drag and drop— increases emotional engagement with the learning material and grows their chances of making the best decisions when confronted with the real world.”
The results
"Welcome to the Investment Factor," the interactive video solution created through AllianzGI's partnership with Rapt Media and production company Casual Films, has proven highly successful in the following ways:
- Strong engagement results with recruits, new hires, and current employees of the firm.
- Delivered on the business case that AllianzGI learning leaders had made to company executives.
As Tony White, Head of Learning & Dev and Talent Management in Europe for AllianzGI explains:
The business trusted us that this [interactive video] was the right thing to do. We operated within our overall investment philosophy [by asking]: "Why should I invest in your product?" Why would it be any differet [for learning initiatives originating] in L&D?
Why Rapt Media?
AllianzGI knew it needed a way to enhance its engagement strategy with job candidates and new hires. Using storytelling, video, and gamified learning, AllianzGI’s interactive video provides a deeper experience for job candidates and new hires around the company’s organizational culture, work environment, and onsite facilities. Using Rapt Media’s interactive video solution ensured the functionality of the game-based scoring component through custom development and implementation.
