During this month, whilst continuing to serve my UK clients, I have been gradually picking up more and more projects from offices in the US (these include projects run mainly out of the New York office, and also assisting on projects run out of the New Jersey and Connecticut), as well as assisting with a global acquisition project.

Some of these projects focus on technical actuarial and modelling issues, and involve applying many of the skills that I have developed during my professional career in the UK to these relatively unfamiliar issues. By comparison, some of the other projects (such as assisting in preparing a Request for Proposal – a document which companies will ask potential advisors to submit when considering appointing a new advisor – and assisting on the global acquisition project) give me exposure to a wider range of disciplines. In particular, working on the acquisition project broadens the horizons beyond usual pension benefits into all areas of employees’ compensation and benefits packages (including, for example, healthcare benefits, severance plans and performance incentive plans) and companies’ other HR considerations.

These have been interesting projects for me on a few levels, as they represent a diverse selection of challenges and each call for different skills to be applied to meet these challenges.

Life in Manhattan

This month, I have done less “sight-seeing”, but am well settled into life in New York, and am enjoying many of its characteristics. However, as my British friend over here keeps pointing out, it takes a while to get past comparing everything between the US and UK. I’ll certainly miss the convenience of food here (I’m not sure how I’ll cope without the choice of 20 types of bagel each morning!).

This month featured the qualification party of one of our colleagues in the New Jersey office (following completion of his exams). It’s good to see that there is little difference between UK and US traditions for such an event, and we enjoyed a great night out in Manhattan, finished off in style at a Karaoke Bar belting out the classics!

I also had my first visitors from the UK come over to stay, which was a lot of fun. They seemed to accomplish more in four days than I’ve managed in two months, and even managed to get a photo of themselves broadcast on a billboard in Times Square!

What next?

In the coming fortnight, I have friends visiting from Bristol and so look forward to the first of many stints I will be doing as a tour guide. I also look forward to continuing to learn more about US pension plans and applying my actuarial skills to the different issues that these raise.

Read my first blog

Two hours and 26 miles after setting off, we stopped for breakfast in St. Albans. We then powered through another 40 miles to Wellingborough where we stopped for a healthy McDonalds lunch to try and replace some energy.

Saturday afternoon was by far the hardest part of the journey. This was partly down to the 2 packs of Haribo, 10 Mars Bars and 4 Lucozades, which I got through during the course of the day giving extreme sugar highs and lows, but mainly due to a strong northerly wind and unrelenting, undulating hills which steadily got steeper the further north we went. Down one of the larger hills we managed to reach a top speed of 45 mph, momentarily breaking the speed limit however the excitement was soon lost to the realisation that whatever we go down we inevitably must cycle back up again. We eventually arrived in Nottingham at 20:00, had a curry and went to bed.

We were expecting Sunday to be much worse, however once we got past the initial aches and pains, the rest of the day was relatively easy. The wind had changed direction and although it did threaten to rain a few times, it was over before we had time to stop and put on jackets. This allowed us to relax and admire some of the gems of the north – Mansfield, Rotherham, Barnsley and Sheffield. We reached Leeds after a total of 20 hours cycling and a night’s stop-off in Nottingham at 18:00 and made our way to the Crypt which was unfortunately up yet another hill. After being greeted with a cup of tea and a warm meal, which was of surprisingly good quality, we spoke to several of the Crypt’s clients. What struck both of us was how happy and friendly they all were and they were extremely grateful for the kindness and charity provided by everyone at Hewitt.

So thank you again to everyone for your generous donations. We have raised nearly £2000 for the Crypt, double what we were aiming for.

Thanks again for your support,
Tom & Bruno (On behalf of the summer intern team, ‘Impact’) 

After lunch we got split up into the teams we would be working in to do the project for the rest of the week. We had a short activity to show us how we worked as a team and things we needed to improve on (like not talking over each other!) and then we were given the brief for the project we had to do. We came up with our plan for the following day and sorted out the questions we needed to ask to do our research and then finished for the night.

We had a really yummy three course sit down meal (all the food was delicious) with some wine on the table followed by a trip to the bar to chat and yet to know everyone.

On the second day we had to get on with our project, which including making some conference calls to people who had been at Hewitt for some time to gather research for the presentation we had to give on Friday. I was quite nervous about making the conference call, but we worked in pairs so we could help each other out. The person we spoke to was really helpful and friendly so I relaxed a bit after we had asked the first few questions.

We also had some activities to do, 2 as a team and 2 as smaller groups within the team. The first team activity was called ‘Equilibrium’, we all had to balance a see-saw with all of us on, but we could only get on one at a time. We worked really well as a team; (we’d learnt from the task the previous day!) we communicated really well and managed to complete the task, thanks mostly to one of our team members having very strong legs!

The 2 smaller tasks included a physical and a non physical. I took part in the non-physical; we didn’t read the instructions fully and ended up doing some parts of the task that didn’t earn us any points! So unfortunately we came last. I took photos of the physical task, which was possibly the funniest part of the induction. The team had to get as many members to an island and back, but they had to alternate the order, and they could use some ropes a pulley and a boat. Everything was going really well, one team members had got across and back, there was second team member on the island, and the boat was on the way back to the shore when one of the ropes came untied. They managed to get the boat back to the shore and then two members untied the ropes on each end of the boat (they didn’t realise that the other one was untying the rope too!). They all turned their back on the boat to decide what to do, blissfully unaware that they’d untied the rope from both sides of the boat, and the boat floated off into the lake! Luckily the wind was on their side and the boat floated across to the island, where the team member on the island managed to get in the boat but he had no way of getting back! When the time was up, the team member in boat was given an ore to get back. Even though it all went wrong, we still managed to win the task!

The final team task went really well, we managed to finish it within the time and work well as a team, although we learnt that communicating over long distances was quite difficult.

After the tasks, we met up as a team to decide what to do for our presentation. We decided on a structure for the presentation but didn’t get much content down before the end of the day so I was quite worried about how we were going to get on the next day.

The evening was concluded with a delicious BBQ and a quiz. The quiz was really well organised, we were split into regional teams, the Birmingham, Bristol and Leeds offices were put together because they are smaller. Unfortunately we came last, but we did get the wooden spoon prize of some chocolate which went down well!

The final day was the day of the presentations. I was quite worried because the day before we hadn’t got much done and talking to the other groups; they’d completely finished their presentations! But we all worked really hard in the morning and managed to put together our presentation, including a tree which some of our team put together at 3am in the morning to help exam some of our brief.

The presentation went really well, I was really nervous while we were waiting but everyone, including all the other teams, did a really good job. We decided as a team not to use power point much, the usual way of giving a presentation, and used a few different ways including Hewitt Fortunes (our version of Family Fortunes) and standing up and talking without a slide show. Although this was risky, it paid off and we had some really good feedback from the people who came to watch the presentations.

After all the presentations and feedback, we watched a short video on the funny bits of the 3 days that the facilitators made. It was a really good way to end the induction and after it finished we all got to go home for the weekend!

2 weeks graduate training

The technical graduate training started with battling my way through the London Underground with my big pink suitcase (I was staying overnight for 2weeks!) to the London office. The first day of training was quite good, we had talks on introductions to pensions and investments, which were useful for RPC revision! (RPC stands for Retirement Practice Certificate; we had to do the exam at the end of September, just after joining)

After training, the graduates from the regional offices (Birmingham, Bristol and Leeds) travelled to the first hotel we were staying. The hotel was really good and there was a pub next door so we went there for some tea and a chat.

We met up for breakfast together in the morning and then walked to the office for our ActEd training. The training was quite scary, the trainer told us how much work we should do for the actuarial exams. It was more that we expected (21-24hours per week!) so we were all worried about what was going to happen to our life over the next few years! But the training was also really useful, we got an induction to some of the CT subjects, which I’d never seen before, so I found it really helpful.

The following day we had some more ActEd training and another course following on from what we’d learnt in the morning. When we finished, we headed off to the second hotel of our stay.

For the next week (Thursday-Thursday) we were split up into 2 groups, the Regional offices and Epsom were together, and London and St Albans were together. We had 2 days of excel training, which I really enjoyed although I’d seen some of it before so I thought it could have been a bit shorter, but it was a good refresher and it was really interactive with lots of time to a go at things which was very handy.

We had some more induction training in the second week including some training on calculations that we’d use in the office. On one of the mornings instead of going round the group introducing ourselves, like we’d probably done 10 times in the past week, we made origami animals  my zebra and tiger now sit on my desk in the office.

The final Thursday all the grads were put back together for the last 2 days of training. It was good to see the other grads and we had a few drinks on Thursday night to catch up and chat! The last day of training went well, we had one talk which was useful for some RPC revision that hadn’t gone so well all week because we’d been staying over in hotels all week and spent the evenings going for tea and chatting!

I really enjoyed the training, it was fun to stay overnight with some of the other grads, we became quite good friends after spending 2 weeks together! I had done some of the training before but I enjoyed refreshing what I’d previously done and spending 2 weeks with the new grads.

Starting in the office

Week 1:

I wasn’t that nervous about starting in the office as I did a few internships before. On the first day we (me & Chris the other graduate starting in Birmingham) had a manager chat, where they told us they had high expectations of us and that they had received good feedback about us from the graduate training. I didn’t realise the trainers were going to give feedback on us! Although I was pleased the feedback was good because I thought I worked well in the 2 weeks of training. We also went out for lunch on the first day with the rest of the PAS team. I really enjoyed this, it was a good way of catching up with the people I worked with last year and meeting the people who started since in a social environment .

We weren’t given much work in the first week because we had Thursday and Friday off (for a study day and the RPC exam) and after all the in house training we only had just over a day left to do some work! I got given some work similar to what I’d done before and remembered quite a lot of it surprisingly!

On the study day I actually managed to do quite a lot of work, I needed to because I hadn’t done as much as I thought I would in the 2 weeks of training so I’d spent any free time in the week doing some RPC revision! I found it strange learning lots of facts, dates and acronyms because I’m used to learning methods as I did a straight maths degree. At the end I felt like I’d done quite a lot of preparation for the exam but I still didn’t feel confident!

On the day of the RPC exam I was quite nervous, I met up with the others going from Birmingham and we got the train together . The RPC exam went alright, I found it difficult to choose between 2 answers in some of the questions and I don’t know if I’ve passed it or not yet! The rest of the day was really good, I enjoyed seeing everyone from the graduate training again (it had been a week since I’d last seen them!). The afternoon training on legal issues and health & safety finished a lot earlier than I thought so we managed to get a much earlier train and be back in Birmingham for tea!

Week 2

This was our first full week in the office. There’s a resource meeting every week to decide who is going to do which pieces of work that needs to be done in the week. The resource manager gave me a list of my work for the week and showed me where I needed to put it on the computer so next week they can see what work I have on. I was given a few things to do, the office has been quite quiet because of people being out on study leave (the summer exams are on at the moment!) so there hasn’t been loads for us to do, although I have a research project that I started to do last summer and the on boarding project we were given when we started in the office so I haven’t had a time without work yet!

We got to go to our first meeting on Monday too; it was a PAS knowledge exchange meeting, which happen about once a month. All the PAS team go and people talk about any changes or new things coming up and also anything interesting that might be useful to us for adding value to Hewitt. It was quite an informal meeting, and anyone can join in and share their thoughts, which I liked.

The first full week went quite quickly, I was kept pretty busy, especially at the end of the week! We went out for lunch on Friday, and I got invited to some of the other socials happening in the next few months so I feel like I’m settling into the office again.

After negotiating the windy roads of deepest, darkest Oxfordshire I parked up outside the training centre. After checking into a luxurious double room with ensuite bathroom I rejoined my fellow graduates with a sense of mystery and excitement. Daf and Julie had been very mysterious about the activities which our time would involve so I was worried about being dumped in the woods somewhere and being left to fend for ourselves! Although not as brutal the task we were initially faced with was just as challenging. We struggled to remember a series of knots required a hold a raft together which consisted of a series of wooden bars and 4 barrels.

Another of the morning’s tasks involved an imaginary ravine which we needed to cross using a series of planks. After a series of miscommunications and accidental plunges down the ravine we were blindfolded and ordered to start again! The session ended with a post mortem from Daf and we concluded that we needed to work as a team if we were going to succeed with similar tasks later in the week.

Next came a chance to test our new raft building skills as we faced a race against the other teams to construct and race our crafts across a lake. After finishing a relatively sea worthy vessel we took to the water. On the first crossing we veered dangerously toward a tangle with 2 of the other boats and resulted in being some way behind the leaders for the return journey. We gained a third place finish with a last minute push as the collective might of our fine oarsmen was unleashed. A less competitive race was then contested and the rowers turned on each other. Repetitive splashing and an over forceful docking resulted in a few people requiring a shower before lunch including Daffyd!

The afternoon gave us a chance to relax and learn a bit about what we can expect over the next couple of weeks as Hewitt graduates. We watched a video from the Hewitt CEO and received the briefs for a project which will conclude in us delivering a presentation on Friday. As if the all you can eat buffet lunch was not enough we were treated to a sit down 3 course meal of soup, duck and ice cream as well as a fair amount of table wine!

Thursday 3rd September

Our first physical task in an increasingly “Crystal Maze”-like series of activities was a large see saw which we had to balance with everyone standing on it. After a number of failed attempts with no real strategy the team pulled together and found a solution. With Danny’s calves trembling he held the see saw in place as everyone mounted the plank. He then took a few seconds to blow his nose as the precious seconds ticked away before precariously stepping onto the see saw. 3 seconds of agonising stability meant we had completed the task and could see the effects of our improved teamwork.

Today was the presentation research day and people were required to conduct phone interviews with associates. Between the research other tasks were ongoing including one which led to Steve laughing “the most (he) ever had at a graduate induction”. The task in question was a ferry crossing in which a small amount of equipment was available to help transport people to an island. After creating a meticulous plan we took to the water but unfortunately a series of comical errors including knot failure leading to the boat drifting away and us losing nearly all of the equipment which we used! Despite this we managed to achieve the most successful crossings (1!)

The afternoon included a treasure hunt task which involved drawing elephants and measuring the distance round a lake as well as other random challenges! The final task was another ravine crossing, this time with a suspended tyre. Again the team pulled together to result in the first successful crossing of the day.

The day ended with a barbeque and quiz. Our knowledge on Monsters INC and Cluedo helped us to a third place, one place above the facilitators team (sorry Julie!). We had discussed how our presentation would work earlier in the day and after hours of debate we decided to include a cardboard tree as a prop. Having decided that we had a tight time frame we ended up burning the midnight oil in order to construct the tree!

Friday 4th September

Friday was all about the presentations with the prospect sharing our ideas with a panel of senior associates. Our ideas began to take shape and we felt more confident about our novel approach which now included a Family Fortunes game show.

The other teams had similar briefs and presented their ideas very competently. Everyone was complemented on their confident presentation skills and thanked for our research which we were ensured would be taken on board, even by associates so senior in the organisation.

Having listened to feedback about our performance we could relax and watch a compilation of videos from the week including our disastrous raft building efforts! The week was a really good chance to get to know your fellow graduates at Hewitt as well as having a lot of fun.

Being a facilitator carries the burden of ensuring the future of Hewitt are well looked after and that all of the local amenities are in working order. This obviously required testing the beverages at the bar to ensure they were of the highest standard. In fact, such is the extent to which we look to make our Grads feel at home, we were still debating the quality of the produce three days later. As a further example of the lengths the facilitators go to - we even ‘threw’ a leading position in the annual quiz !!  (Well done to the investment team by the way - cream of the crop etc )

The MAIN goal at the end of the three days was for the Grads to deliver a presentation on the final day to a panel of five Hewitt leaders (including their peers). Creating the presentations required the Grads to pull on a number of resources, such as: interviewing a handful of Hewitt Associates at differing levels, reading senior manager blogs, using the internet etc. It also required them to pull on their creativity and to use different delivery methods outside of the usual ‘death by powerpoint’ approach. In between working on the presentations the Grads were given ‘outdoor’ challenges that looked to emulate the type of skills required in the workplace. i.e team work, leadership, creating clear action plans and then delivering. These activities were also aimed at producing ‘real life’ examples of how obstacles can get in the way of the a pre - planned day. The outdoor challenges did bring up some moments of pure comedy genius - however I couldn’t possibly try to begin verbalising these.

Following the outdoor challenges, the BBQ/quiz evening, general socialising and delivery of the presentations I can safely say that the future of Hewitt is looking bright. The delivery of the presentations were of the highest quality and the ingenuity of the content, was at times, hilarious.

Highlight for me: To tough to call but its between Mr Jefford’s quiz and sheep antics, and Daffyd’s impromptu swimming efforts after the raft race.

Anyway, that’s it from me.  A big thanks to all those who participated - it was a great to be a part of!