Farmers Mutual Group (FMG): Evolving a forward-thinking new learning culture in a well-established Mutual

Farmers Mutual Group (FMG), New Zealand’s leading rural insurer, is relationship focussed and heavily invested in the rural communities it supports. It is equally invested in its own employees’ engagement, growth and development.

Farmers Mutual Group (FMG), New Zealand’s leading rural insurer, is relationship focussed and heavily invested in the rural communities it supports. It is equally invested in its own employees’ engagement, growth and development.

However FMG’s Learning & Development Team recognised that learning could contribute much more to the employee experience - and that their largely classroom-based approach to training wasn’t going to keep pace with employee needs or best support the success of the Mutual over the next 100 years.

With the help of some powerful Cornerstone technologies, they’ve started to discreetly seed into the company a new culture of continuous and collaborative learning.

This evocatively-named initiative is the team’s five-year strategy to evolve FMG’s culture to one of continuous learning. Their plan:

To lead thinking and get ahead of learning needs, rather than be reactive and deliver training as requested.

To make learning more fluid, more liberating - a continuous, self-directed, anywhere, anytime part of everyone’s workflow, rather than something structured and imposed from above.

To instil in their own L&D team a vision and mission and better ways to measure their contribution to the company’s next 100 years of success.

They haven’t, however, tried to change the landscape overnight. This is an evolution not a revolution.

Instead, in a thoughtful plan set out over three carefully staged horizons, they’re progressively introducing new approaches - proving their success - sharing results - and partnering with colleagues to take Freedom To Learn forward step by step.