ICMIF member and rural insurer NFU Mutual has been named as one of the UK’s top 25 companies of 2021 by professional networking site LinkedIn.
LinkedIn’s Top Companies is an annual list that reveals where professionals want to work and identifies the best employers that help grow careers.
As well as tracking how career and skills development is supported by an employer, LinkedIn also monitor employee stability, how workplace culture is ingrained and acted upon, as well as employees’ ability to advance within an organisation.
This latest recognition comes after NFU Mutual – which is based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, but have around 4,000 employees right across the country – was the only UK organisation to be awarded the ‘Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award’ earlier this year.
Trisha Jones, HR Director at NFU Mutual, said: “It’s great to be recognised by LinkedIn as one of the top companies in the UK as NFU Mutual prides itself on being a great place to work.
“At NFU Mutual we’ve been employing great people and supporting them to develop their careers for over 100 years. We actively support our employees to achieve their career potential whether that’s in their current role or as part of furthering their career within our business.
“We were so proud of how resilient our workforce was last year, and how they pulled together when faced with huge change. This accolade helps to continue attracting great talent to our business, it also indicates how current employees feel about NFU Mutual as a workplace.”
Siobhan Morrin, News Editor at LinkedIn said: “The Top Companies list provides a helpful resource of companies that offer skills development and stability, giving our members that added confidence when taking that first step towards their next opportunity.”
Joel Hawkins has been with NFU Mutual for 17 years. Currently the Assistant Branch Manager at the flagship Thornbury Agency, he said: “NFU Mutual is an amazing organisation for developing its people and I have benefited enormously from this approach.
“Over 17 years with the business I have been heavily invested in, in terms of support for professional qualifications, attendance at training events, opportunities for secondments and leading projects.
“Obviously, these chances have come because of my desire to take on additional responsibilities but I’ve never felt any period where my progress and development is not moving in a positive direction. I think this is great credit to NFU Mutual’s approach to looking after its staff and more specifically for me, working under some great leaders who were prepared to give me a chance.”
Dominique Stout is an NFU Mutual apprentice Injury Claims Paralegal. She said: “I feel massively supported by my manager and my team too. There are many reasons, the employee benefits, the career progression, the variety in roles but ultimately it feels as though we are also so closely knitted together and all rooting for the same goals.
“It doesn’t matter what level you are or what your role entails, everybody at NFU Mutual is focused on making our offices a great place to work and ensuring that we are all able to do our best under any circumstances.”
LinkedIn Top Companies is an annual list that helps professionals identify companies who put their employees first — and provides the insights they need to navigate their professional journey.
There are seven key pillars, each revealing an important element of career progression:
- Ability to Advance: Tracks employee promotions within a company and when they move to a new company, based on standardised job titles.
- Skills Growth: Looks at how employees across the company are gaining skills while employed at the company, using standardised LinkedIn skills.
- Company Stability: Tracks attrition over the past year, as well as the percentage of employees that stay at the company at least three years.
- External Opportunity: Looks at Recruiter outreach across employees at the company, signalling demand for workers coming from these companies.
- Company Affinity: Seeks to measure how supportive a company’s culture is, looks at connection volume on LinkedIn among employees, controlled for company size.
- Gender Diversity: Measures gender parity within a company and its subsidiaries.
- Educational Background: Examines the variety of educational attainment among employees, from no degree up.
