Supporting organizations going through change
Who is MetLife Legal Plans?
MetLife Legal Plans (MLP) is a subsidiary of MetLife Insurance Company, one of the largest insurance, annuities, and benefits providers worldwide. MLP’s goal is to provide employees and their families with affordable and accessible legal consultation in common personal matters at a lower financial cost through accessible in-network attorneys alongside digital tools and self-help resources.
"I cannot say how much I value our partnership with Harbinger."
Shannon Nihoff - Chief People Officer
What was the challenge?
With the goal of making legal help more accessible and affordable, MLP recognized the key market of individuals within the justice gap. The main challenge was helping to train and equip employees within the client services center, alongside the panel team, with relevant and proper materials to ensure that their clients' needs were met and that they were well-treated, thereby fostering long-lasting relationships between MLP and their respective clients.
Key challenges included:
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Differentiate themselves within the market
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Ensure they are upscaling their people to service their members
a. Integrating empathy-based techniques into customer service -
Training had to be accessible and self-paced for their work culture
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Built upon their own in-place provided training programs
Training Challenges
The challenge at MetLife stemmed from high turnover in customer service positions, compounded by a work culture that prioritized rigid schedules and limited time for direct training sessions. Given these factors, implementing a formal training program posed a risk of disrupting employees' daily workflows and negatively impacting productivity.
What did we do?
Training Needs Assessment
Harbinger’s training needs assessment established a clear, scalable approach to delivering training - grounded in available platforms, stakeholder priorities, and an inclusive learning experience across MLP.
Our training needs assessment involved evaluating available platforms for delivering training content, such as Zendesk and Kahoot, both of which have already been introduced within the company. We engaged stakeholders across the organization to review current materials and to understand their expectations and training priorities. These conversations helped us discover what employees needed to feel more confident in their roles and how best to meet their needs.
To ensure training reflected inclusive values and prepared employees to support MLP’s diverse customer base, we also collaborated closely with DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) resource groups to discuss how we could incorporate inclusive values into the training. These discussions allowed us to better understand MLP's clientele and how to train its employees to support these values.
Employee recognition and brand consistency were key considerations in the design of the training program. One key feature of the initiative was the creation of a unique training certification badge, explicitly branded for MLP. This badge was designed to align with other MetLife certifications and could be posted on platforms like LinkedIn to recognize employee achievements publicly. Branding was a central focus throughout the project to ensure and maintain consistency with MetLife’s overall image and employee experience.
Training Strategy
To develop an effective training strategy, we had to consider a myriad of variables specific to MLP’s work culture and address its unique challenges. Through conducting training needs assessment and meetings with key stakeholders, we gained insights into the culture and the organization’s expectations. From this process, we identified three key project goals:
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Simplifying external communications to make work more accessible to clients
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Promote consistent internal and external communications across the company
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Design training that can be completed independently while passively tracking progress.
To achieve these goals, we prioritized creating self-paced modules that allowed employees to learn independently while enabling the company to track progress passively. The content was developed to match MetLife’s tone and vocabulary, using clear, everyday language instead of complex legal jargon. The training emphasized not only knowledge but also effective communication, helping employees explain legal topics clearly and empathetically to clients who may be unfamiliar with legal terminology.
Training Delivery
Our training strategy was tailored to MetLife’s needs, building on previous training efforts that used Kahoot for main training videos and quizzes, alongside Zendesk for supplementary materials. These tools were selected for their simplicity and effectiveness in engaging employees, with Kahoot offering a competitive element through its built-in scoreboard system. Employees appreciated the friendly competition element of Kahoot, which helped keep them motivated and engaged. Zendesk hosted supplementary training materials, such as downloadable PDFs, printables, and presentation slides.
We also facilitated MLP’s transition from YouTube to Vimeo for hosting training videos, resolving previous technical issues and ensuring smoother playback across devices.
Training was rolled out in phases, starting with a pilot group of team leaders. This initial phase allowed leaders to familiarize themselves with the content, equipping them to answer questions and support their teams during the full rollout.
Training Material
The training approach created concise, engaging, and accessible learning that fit seamlessly into employees’ day-to-day work. They were designed to be concise, engaging, and directly relevant to the daily challenges MLP employees face. Recognizing the need for brevity and accessibility in a fast-paced customer service environment, we created a modular structure composed of three 15-minute video-based training modules. Each module featured a video embedded directly into the Kahoot platform, followed by a short quiz to reinforce learning and assess comprehension. This format allowed employees to engage in the training in short, manageable segments that could be completed between calls or during scheduled downtime, minimizing disruption to their workflow.
Each video module focuses on a distinct theme tied to key skills essential to MLP employees. Topics included effective and empathetic communication with clients, de-escalation strategies for difficult conversations, and consistent messaging aligned with the MetLife brand. The use of video helped illustrate tone and delivery techniques that would be difficult to convey through text alone, making abstract skills like empathy and active listening more tangible and relatable.
What was the outcome?
The training program was successfully launched, beginning with a pilot group of team leaders. Through this initial phase, leaders were equipped with both the training content and supporting speaking points, enabling them to reinforce key messages and guide their teams as questions arose.
As a result of this, MLP now has a sustainable training model in place. The organization can continue to onboard and train employees using the materials independently, without further help from us here at Harbinger.
How DEI Training Supports an Evolving Organizational Culture
Organizational culture does not change overnight. For companies like MLP navigating growth, high turnover, and an increasingly diverse client base, DEI training plays a critical role in anchoring cultural transformation to day-to-day employee behaviour. Rather than functioning as a one-time compliance requirement, a well-designed DEI training program becomes an ongoing mechanism for aligning values, building shared language, and embedding inclusive practices into every layer of the organization.
Establishing a Shared Foundation During Times of Change
When organizations are undergoing cultural shifts—whether driven by leadership changes, workforce growth, or an evolving customer base—employees can experience uncertainty about expectations and values. DEI training provides a common framework that helps bridge gaps between legacy norms and emerging priorities. At MLP, the decision to embed DEI principles directly into customer service training ensured that inclusive values were not treated as separate or supplementary, but as foundational to how employees do their work.
Reducing the Impact of Turnover on Culture
High turnover is one of the most significant barriers to sustained cultural change. Each time an employee leaves, institutional knowledge, cultivated behaviours, and cultural alignment are at risk of being lost. By building DEI content into a scalable, self-paced onboarding model, MLP created a repeatable process for transmitting its values to every new hire—regardless of when they join or who trains them. New employees receive consistent messaging around empathy, equity, and inclusive communication from day one, helping to preserve and reinforce the cultural direction the organization is working toward.
Empowering Leaders to Model Inclusive Behaviour
Cultural change is most durable when it is modeled from the top down. MLP’s decision to pilot the DEI training with team leaders first was a deliberate strategy: by equipping leaders with both the content and the supporting talking points, they were positioned to champion inclusive practices, answer questions authentically, and reinforce the training’s key messages in real time. When leaders visibly embody DEI values, it signals to their teams that these are not aspirational ideals but practical, lived expectations of how the organization operates.
Building Long-Term Capacity for Inclusive Growth
Perhaps most importantly, embedding DEI into a sustainable training infrastructure means that cultural evolution does not depend on any single initiative or external partner. MLP now has the tools, materials, and organizational muscle to continue refining and delivering DEI-informed training as its workforce and client base continue to evolve. This kind of internal capacity is essential for organizations that want their cultural commitments to outlast any single project—ensuring that inclusion becomes not a destination, but a continuous, adaptive practice woven into the organization’s everyday operations.