Field Rewards - Bonuses

Enabling Financial Representatives (FR’s) to monitor and learn about Northwestern Mutual Bonus programs.

Introduction

Northwestern Mutual has identified areas of improvement in regards to how Financial Representatives (FR’s) get compensated. The current available tools are antiquated and difficult to use for many FR’s. The Field Reward Modernization team was tasked with finding specific themes and opportunities for improvement and then execute on those opportunities. One of the areas for improvement was around visibility into bonuses.

My Role

Lead Product Desiger

As a design lead, it was my job to manage all aspects of the design process from research and ideation to creative conceptualization and design. As part of my role, I collaborated with product management and engineering leads to research and develop cohesive design plans, early concepts, and prototypes.

The Team

  • Senior Designer

  • UX Researcher

  • Product Manager

  • Business Analyst

  • Lead Engineer

  • Field Advocacy & Collaboration Consultant

Project length

6 months

Methods used

  • Contextual Inquiry

  • Design Sprints

  • Design Studio

  • Design Validation

Business Mandate

Objective

  • Create Bonus Framework for all bonus programs

  • Create additional visibility to the field of their DI Incentive bonus tracking and awards.

  • Eliminate Manual activities for home office in processing DI Incentive

  • Reduce time to administer the DI Incentive Program & Adjustments for Home office.

Key Results

  • The interface framework is able to be used by other bonus programs in the future

  • Increase calculation frequency to daily vs. periodic

  • Provide FR’s and Field Leaders visibility to DI Incentive bonus tracking

  • Create ability for home office to configure DI Incentive bonus Rules without Engineering support.

  • Create interface where Home Office employees can view DI Incentive activity and make necessary adjustments. 

  • We’ve reduced the home office processing time for DI Incentive bonus by automating eligibility and enrollment and the freeze process steps

Customer Problem

Field representatives have limited ability to view DI Incentive Bonus information which is only produced periodically on reports as well as reported when they receive the bonus on the commission statement. As a result many FRs are unaware that the bonus exists or how they are tracking to this bonus.

Target Users

  • Financial Representatives

  • Field Leadership

  • Home Office Administrator (think of them like a call center)

The Problem

Meet Jane

Jane is a Financial Representative with Northwestern Mutual. Jane is paid commission from products she sells which means that her paycheck varies a lot from week to week.

Jane hears about a bonus

At the end of the year, Jane hears from a co-worker that they qualified for the Disability Incentive Bonus.

Jane searches for answers

Curious about this bonus Jane searches Northwestern Mutuals Intranet to find out more information and to see if she qualifies for the Disability Incentive Bonus.

Jane finds what she needs.. or does she?

After some digging Jane eventually finds the information she needs in the form of a PDF. Jane now has to open another tool to see what her current sales are for the year.

Jane compares her performance numbers

After comparing the information on the PDF to her sales numbers, Jane realizes that she was only a few hundred dollars short from reaching the minimum thresholds for the bonus.

Jane is sad.

Jane is understandably frustrated, and since it’s the end of the year, Jane must wait for an entire year before she can see if she is qualified for the Disability Incentive bonus.

Why It matters

FR’s are not employees of Northwestern mutual and are not obligated to sell Northwestern Mutual Products. As a result of being independent contractors and being compensated on commission, it is difficult for an FR to know exactly how much money they will receive from one paycheck to the next. Part of their compensation comes in the form of a bonus. There are twelve different bonus programs at Northwestern Mutual and no easy way to track progress towards a particular bonus in real time which leads to frustration for the FR.

Discovery

From previously conducted research around compensation, this theme emerged regarding bonuses.

Theme

Lack of visibility around bonuses

Sub themes

  • Financial Representatives are unaware or don't take advantage of bonus opportunities

  • It would be helpful to track bonuses on behalf of FRs across all categories

  • Bonus improvement opportunities

  • Some Bonuses are invisible

  • Positive experience with what can be seen in insights (Book of Business)

  • Investments should count toward New Client Bonus

Project Plan

Facilitated early-stage discovery by hosting cross functional team members in a design studio.

Kickoff Sprint

Building Empathy

Stakeholder map

 Early Ideation

Mind Mapping

Sketching

Sprint Cadence

Our Design sprint model included a week of design and a week for validation. We repeated this cadence 5 times during this project. About halfway through this project we added a dedicated UX Researcher, otherwise I would recommend conducting 3 weeks sprints to leave time for synthesis.

Round 1 Validation

Round 1 Designs

Compensation Overview

Bonus Overview

Bonus Details

Round 1 Validation Findings

  • All Participants felt that the concepts presented were moving in the right direction, providing them with a centralized location for their bonus information, which is currently hard to track down.

  • At a high-level, participants wanted help seeing what they (or those they lead) were were eligible for, and in deciding whether it is possible and worth the time and effort required to earn the extra money. This was dependent on how close they are to the bonus, how much money they could earn, and what they would need to do to earn the bonus. They tended to want to focus on the bonus thresholds they already close to earning.

  • When viewing the pages ,

    • All were looking to understand how they could earn more money.

    • Most were looking to understand how to better coach those they lead.

    • One was looking to uncover district level bonus progress trends.

  • Most Participants expected that they would be able to access additional information about how bonuses worked to help them better understand how they (or those they lead) can earn more money. Most expected this to be located separately from from where they would track their own progress.

Round 2 Validation

Round 2 Designs

Bonus Overview - Round 2

Bonus Details - Round 2

Field Leadership - Round 1

Round 2 Validation Findings

  • Overall, participants saw the design as a massive step forward relative to their current experience, mainly in that it presented essential information to participants in one location. This is seen as something that can help motivate Field Members, increase compensation, improve understanding about bonuses, and reduce frustration when looking for this kind of information.

  • Although two tasks (i.e., one in which participants had to track a simple bonus progression and another in which they had to navigate between a team member and a personal view) were completed without any issues, another task (in which participants had to track progress toward earning a complex bonus, DI Incentive) was much more challenging.

  • Consistent with previous research, a successful summary ought to present: 1) Bonus eligibility, 2) Distance from achieving a bonus increase, 3) How much of a bonus increase would be received if achieved, 4) Steps required to achieve a bonus increase. •

  • New to this round of research, it is also necessary to highlight how much time one has to achieve a bonus increase.

  • All participants valued data summaries, that could present information that is currently hard for them to track down, and data comparisons for each person they lead. For some, there was less value in being able to compare team members to one another.

Round 3 Validation

Round 3 Designs

Bonus Controls Prototype

Bonus Details Prototype

Bonus Overview - Round 3 - Option 1

Bonus Overview - Round 3 - Option 2

Bonus Details - Round 3 - Option 1

Bonus Details - Round 3 - Option 2

My Team - Round 3

Round 3 Validation Findings

  • The consolidated view provides value to users’ business planning and motivation levels and proved to be easier to learn and understand compared to both the current experience and previous design iterations.

  • The version of the DI Incentive Bonus Card that contained the Bonus Rate visual was most consistently easily understood across participants, and it provided helpful information about one’s current progress.

  • The Bonus Details page was seen as valuable and comprehensive because it provided clear insight into how DI Incentive bonus works, how much is currently being earned for DI Incentive bonus, and how one is progressing toward earning more for DI Incentive bonus. The version of the page containing the interactive grid was most consistently understood, though some participants felt that it could contain more clarity about their current progress.

Before & After

Instrumentation

Reflection

This project was one of the first projects that I led from start to finish at Northwestern Mutual. As such, there were a lot of lessons learned and team growing pains. If I could do it again, I would have included more subject matter experts from the start. I had underestimated how complex the bonus programs were and it was a struggle to wrap my brain around the bonus program and design and communicate the most important aspects of that bonus program to the end user.

It was amazing to me how many FR’s created their own workarounds for the inadequacies of our digital offerings. It wouldn’t be uncommon for us to interview a user who had their own personal spreadsheet that tracked their commissions and sales. There was also a wide range of technical ability between FR’s. Some FR’s were extremely comfortable with technology while others preferred their analog, homegrown, solutions.