Assistant Director, Employee Experience
About The Position
The Assistant Director, Employee Experience is a strategic thought leader and hands-on employee experience architect. The role uses facilitation, human-centered design, systems thinking, prioritization, and execution to work across the enterprise and translate Northwestern Mutual’s employee value proposition into connected, practical, scalable experiences. The position designs and advances employee experience strategies, solutions, practices, and insight activation in response to priority employee and business needs. It partners with stakeholders across the People Function and enterprise to understand employee journeys, use data and research to shape solutions, and guide work from problem framing and design through activation, measurement, and refinement. The role also develops repeatable frameworks, tools, and practices so leaders, People teams, and experience owners can apply employee insights consistently at scale.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in a related field.
- Minimum of 10 years of relevant experience.
- Demonstrated experience using employee insight, human-centered design, and systems thinking to shape and activate employee experience solutions.
- Ability to work across the enterprise, including home office and field, to educate and inspire collective action at all levels.
- Ability to negotiate, influence, and build credibility and strong partnerships in a matrixed organization across business functions and levels.
- Excellent written, verbal, presentation, and storytelling skills.
- Strong systems-thinking and influencing skills.
- Comfort with ambiguity and proven ability to perform in a start-up mode.
- Proven ability to lead multiple complex, cross-functional experience initiatives from discovery and design through activation, measurement, and improvement.
- Ability to operate at both strategic and tactical levels.
- Ability to translate complex or ambiguous experience challenges into clear problem statements, design choices, practical solutions, and activation paths.
- Experience developing scalable frameworks, tools, practices, or approaches that enable others to deliver improved employee experiences.
- Comfort adapting as priorities and work change.
- Skills in business influence, collaborative partnership and planning, stakeholder relationships, strategic and systems thinking, and technical and digital acumen.
Responsibilities
- Work with key stakeholders to understand critical employee interactions and journeys, design cross-functional solutions, and embed experience insights into how work gets done.
- Design and advance employee experience strategies, solutions, practices, and insight activation to address priority employee and business needs.
- Provide human-centered design, journey mapping, facilitation, and consultation to help stakeholders understand current experiences and design and activate solutions shaped by employee experience data and insights.
- Partner with People Function COEs, BHR, and HR Solutions to influence priorities.
- Develop a deep understanding of employee needs, experience patterns, data, and insights to influence and shape People Function solutions.
- Bring together enterprise teams and stakeholders to build shared understanding, gather input, create alignment, promote integration, and drive collaborative design and implementation.
- Use data and insights to identify priorities, inform decisions, shape solutions, and recommend action, including influencing stakeholders at People Function XLT level.
- Develop repeatable approaches, frameworks, tools, and practices to deploy and embed employee experience insights across the enterprise.
- Use data, research, and insights to design integrated employee experiences across employee moments, processes, tools, and people practices, reducing friction and strengthening employee connection, community, and organizational performance.
- Lead employee experience efforts from problem framing and solution design through activation, measurement, and refinement, working with the teams accountable for solution design.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Director
