With US states creating a variety of insurance rules and regulations, such as those around parental and sick leave, the resulting fragmentation has created significant complexity for some companies. Companies must balance the needs for great customer experiences with advanced compliance and security practices. In this interview, McKinsey partner Ann Carver, co-convener of McKinsey’s Women in Tech conference, talks with Polly Nicholas, chief experience officer (CXO) at Unum, a leading provider of employer-provided disability and life insurance, about how she approaches these challenges. Nicholas explains the importance of focusing technology development on protecting both business systems and people’s time—whether filing or processing claims—to create value. She shows how Unum has used technology to improve the end-to-end customer experience while also developing a rigorous financial-planning program to ensure that technology investments deliver strong returns. What follows is an edited version of the conversation.
This interview is part of a series developed around McKinsey’s Women in Tech event, which spotlights trailblazing leaders who are not only breaking barriers but also reshaping the tech landscape.
Making technology work for both customers and business
Ann Carver: What are some of the most critical technology-enabled capabilities to deliver value for customers, and how do you approach getting them in place?
Polly Nicholas: Our goal is to make the end-to-end customer experience quicker and easier while maintaining high-quality human interactions. In the leave-and-disability space, we work with employees, HR, and brokers to quickly understand and initiate an absence for a worker experiencing a significant life event.
We focus on creating easy-to-use, 24/7 digital interactions and integrating our systems with employers’ existing HCM [human capital management] systems to exchange real-time data. This reduces turnaround times and allows employees to focus on their life events without administrative burdens, while also easing HR’s workload.
Human-centered leadership is essential as we enter a new era of technology at work. Protecting time for our customers and employees is a priority. One of the key concerns for employees unexpectedly out due to a leave of absence is when their disability benefits will start, specifically the timing of their payments. Imagine an employee who is suddenly unable to work due to medical conditions. Their immediate worry is how they will manage their finances during this challenging time. To address this, we modernized the payment experience by integrating Zelle, which allows payments to be processed within 24 hours of approval. This quick and reliable payment system provides peace of mind, enabling employees to focus on their recovery without financial stress. This is particularly important considering that over 40 percent of the US workforce does not have enough savings to cover essential expenses like rent or mortgage.
We also addressed the challenge of tracking intermittent leave by connecting directly with HR management systems. Our “OpenTable” experience lets customers enter their time away as easily as making a reservation online.
Human-centered leadership is essential as we enter a new era of technology at work.
A new dawn for the technology officer
Protecting the business and people’s time
Ann Carver: In such a highly regulated sector, how do you think about protecting the business?
Polly Nicholas: As a highly regulated insurer with several HIPAA-regulated products, we have always maintained data security and ethical standards at the highest levels. But when we think about protecting the business, we also think about protecting people’s time. We want to ensure that our systems focus on saving time through process improvements, like automating documentation for claims adjudications. Protecting people’s time is protecting the business because it frees up our people to do the work that matters.
Compliance, protection of customer data, and the safety and security of our technology ecosystem are table stakes and require constant investment, support, and monitoring. One reason for the complexity is the rapid pace of new technology. As we protect, we are also investing in innovation for our customers. For example, while we are not using AI to make claims decisions, we are deploying AI solutions to increase the speed of processing and help our teams access information more easily. This ensures our people can be there when it matters most.
Another challenge is the fragmentation of leave and time-away policies across different states in the US, such as paid family leave. This means we are investing in tailoring compliance, security protocols, and systems. This is a great example where leave laws, technology, and customer experience must all come together for the employer. Employers need experts, and Unum is at the center of supporting employers navigating this changing landscape.
We work closely with the CISO [chief information security officer] to make sure that we are aligned on the measures to take, but we also bring the customer lens to this. Employees generally come to their company’s insurance site rarely, maybe once a year and often at a time of distress. So we want to ensure the experience is secure but also easy for the customer, and that requires deep thinking around the security issues and empathy with our customers. Finding this balance is particularly complex as we’re dealing with a “five-generation workforce” that has much higher expectations of their employee experience.
Protecting people’s time is protecting the business because it frees up our people to do the work that matters.
Strong financials, durable technology, and a customer focus
Ann Carver: How do you think about the role of technology in driving innovation?
Polly Nicholas: I firmly believe that focusing on the customer is key to fostering innovation within organizations. Customer experience can serve as a unifying force, encouraging collaboration and creativity. Satisfied customers not only remain loyal but also attract new customers. However, achieving this requires organizations to genuinely listen to their customers’ needs and understand their experiences.
Successful, continuous investment in innovation must encompass three essential elements. The first is knowing your company’s financials to ensure that growth is sustainable and profitable. The second is implementing technology solutions that align with organizational priorities and are built to last. The third is ensuring that the customer’s viewpoint is central by measuring your progress based on customer growth and retention.
Unum’s strategic capabilities and measurements have enabled the organization to focus our technology investments in key areas of market-facing differentiation. We are also committed to understanding innovation from an external perspective. There are many examples, but a few include the work of our ventures team and partnerships with start-ups, our Unum HR team serving as our own customer to test and drive innovation, and the support from industry experts.
Working with the business on what matters to the business
Ann Carver: How do you ensure transparency to make better investment decisions?
Polly Nicholas: Our investments are closely tied to the company’s purpose, goals, strategy, and capital-allocation plan. In practice, this means we are diligent in connecting the sales assumptions we create with the capabilities needed to achieve those sales, the opex [operating expenditures] expectations, and customer experience targets. This approach provides us with a set of KPIs that we develop closely with finance, strategy, and P&L leaders, which are reflected in our financial plan. The CXO’s KPIs include satisfaction measures, engagement, quotes, and sales—we are measuring critical interaction junctures.
Robust leading and lagging indicators enable important insight into our financial plan. The process allows us to make informed investment decisions and adjust our strategies as needed.
One useful tool in this process is the “where to play and how to win” framework, which we use to communicate our key capabilities and success metrics across the organization. This framework is tied to our financial plan and helps us measure our progress quarterly and annually.
But in the end, what fuels our company is our purpose of “helping the working world thrive throughout life’s moments.”
