SAFECO Trains with Ninth House

SAFECO (Seattle) has chosen Ninth House (San Francisco), a business skills e-learning provider, to help launch a performance-based compensation program.

"SAFECO's corporate initiative, 'Focus On Performance,' comes partially from an employee survey," says the insurer's Karen Dowdall-Sanford, e-learning manager. "The employees indicated that SAFECO really needed a performance-based culture," saying that there was no incentive to reach goals. "We are on a very aggressive schedule to hit specific leadership and performance milestones based on company-wide annual goals."

SAFECO will use Ninth House 3.0, including Instant Advice, an application that provides solutions to everyday challenges. "Based on the employee's decision during sessions, there are different outcomes," Dowdall-Sanford says. "That keeps it interesting."

Initially, SAFECO deployed the online training sessions to its top 600 executives. SAFECO is now considering rolling out Ninth House company-wide.

Dowdall-Sanford says that Ninth House differs from other e-learning applications. "Ninth House's use of interactive media is much better," she says. "So much of the other online learning products are simply PowerPoint presentations."

Greg MacSweeney is editorial director of InformationWeek Financial Services, whose brands include Wall Street & Technology, Bank Systems & Technology, Advanced Trading, and Insurance & Technology. View Full Bio