Employee Community Involvement: Fresh Ideas and Emerging Trends for Today’s Business Leaders

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Text, Wednesdays with Woodward (registered trademark) Webinar Series. 

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JESSICA KEARNEY: Good afternoon and thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to Wednesdays with Woodward, a webinar series where we convene leading experts for conversations about pressing issues at the intersection of insurance, business and public policy. We're so glad you're here with us today. I'm Jessica Kearney, Vice President for Public Policy here at the Travelers Institute, filling in for our host Joan Woodward. Before we get started, I'd like to share a disclaimer about today's program. 

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About Travelers Institute (registered trademark) Webinars. The Wednesdays with Woodward (registered trademark) educational webinar series is presented by the Travelers Institute, the public policy division of Travelers. This program is offered for informational and educational purposes only. You should consult with your financial, legal, insurance or other advisors about any practices suggested by this program. Please note that this session is being recorded and may be used as Travelers deems appropriate. Logos, Travelers Institute (registered trademark). Travelers. Next slide, Wednesdays with Woodward (registered trademark) Webinar Series. Employee Community Involvement: Fresh Ideas and Emerging Trends for Today's Business Leaders. Logos, • Travelers Institute, • Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship, • National Association of Professional Insurance Agents, • Master's in Financial Technology (FinTech) Program at the University of Connecticut School of Business, • Connecticut Business & Industry Association (CBIA), • Insurance Association of Connecticut • MetroHartford Alliance. 

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Also, a huge thanks to our webinar partners today for joining us: the Insurance Association of Connecticut, the National Association of Professional Insurance Agents, the Master's in FinTech Program at the University of Connecticut School of Business, CBIA, the Insurance Association of Connecticut, the MetroHartford Alliance, and of course, the Center for Corporate Citizenship at the Boston College Carroll School of Management. Thank you so much to all of our valued partners.

Now onto our program. So today we're going to be talking about employee engagement. Broadly speaking, whether you're in the business world or the public sector, we all know the value of having an engaged team. And I'm sure we each know personally how great it feels when you're really engaged at work, when you have purpose and you really have that meaning, that reason to get up in the morning. When you feel good, you feel good about showing up each day. We also know that the world has evolved. 

Over the last few years, many of us have settled into new routines, new ways of working, whether that's a hybrid schedule, some remote work, or just new ways of collaborating with distributed team members across the country or the globe. We thought it might be a really interesting moment now to revisit employee engagement for today's program, really through a lens of community involvement. So maybe your employees volunteer in the community or you have a companywide day of service.

We want to know what do employee community outreach programs actually look like today, what value are they driving for communities and your business, and have they evolved with our new ways of working. We're going to dig into all of that. And importantly, we want to share some examples of wins and success stories that you can consider rolling out in your own workplace. So if you're looking to breathe new life into your community outreach in 2024, this next hour is going to be for you.

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Speakers. Three headshots with titles. Jessica Kearney, VP Public Policy; Travelers Institute, Travelers. Colleen M. Olphert - Director, Membership and Member Services; Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship (BCCCC). Marlene Ibsen, VP, Community Relations; CEO and President, Travelers Foundation, Travelers. 

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I am thrilled to be joined today by two outstanding speakers in this space. They'll share the latest research on how these programs benefit communities as well as businesses and their teams, and they'll add insights and perspectives from their vast experience. First up will be Colleen Olphert. She's the Director of Membership and Member Services at the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship.

The center is dedicated to advancing corporate social responsibility and provides more than 500 member companies, including Travelers, with resources, research and executive education to help companies shape their engagement programs. Colleen leads the strategy and operations related to recruitment and retention of member companies. She organizes and leads advisory boards, oversees research and so much more. Prior to joining the center in 2001, Colleen worked in the nonprofit sector, and she received her MBA and her master's in social work from Boston College.

Next up, we're going to be joined by my colleague Marlene Ibsen. Marlene is CEO and President of the Travelers Foundation and Vice President of Community Relations for Travelers, a position she's held since 2007. Marlene manages Travelers’ charitable giving and is responsible for community-related employee engagement and development activities. Marlene has established a strategic approach for our company's philanthropy, and it's designed to align with our business interests with community need.

Under her direction, the Travelers Foundation has successfully implemented a number of signature programs, including our very special Travelers EDGE program, a nationally recognized career pipeline intended to increase the number of under-resourced students who complete bachelor's degrees and prepare for careers in insurance and financial services. And there's so many more that we're going to dig into and talk about today, and I know there's so much more that Marlene's going to share from her experience. So I’m really thrilled to have you both on today. Let's get started. We'll level set with a few words from each of you, and Colleen, I'm pleased to welcome you to the Zoom floor and have you take it away.

COLLEEN OLPHERT: Thank you so much, Jessica. It's wonderful to be here.

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About the Center. A world leader in corporate citizenship research and education, based in the Carroll School of Management at Boston College. Established in 1985, the oldest organization dedicated to corporate citizenship. More than 400 member companies, with combined revenues at 40% of global GDP. A proven track record of delivering world class expertise to professionals who help their companies thrive and shape the twenty-first century. Photo, an atrium against a historic stone building. 

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As mentioned, I'm with the Center for Corporate Citizenship. We have been working with companies like Travelers since 1985 to help advance corporate citizenship through our research, our executive education and our member services to close to now almost 500 member companies. 

We work in many different ways, but we think about the big picture of corporate citizenship, which is how companies are exercising their rights and responsibilities, obligations and privileges. How do you show up in the world? How do we show up in the world?

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A text box across the top of the screen, Corporate Citizenship. How the firm exercises its rights, responsibilities, obligations, and privileges. How do we show up in the world? An arrow to the left of the text box that points to it reads, Who are we? What do we stand for? An arrow below that reads, How we categorize results. Four boxes to the right. Environmental. How we impact our natural environment and how changes to the natural environment can impact our ability to deliver value. Social. How we impact society across our value chain and how changes in our society may impact our ability to deliver value. Governance. How we consider & involve stakeholders (including shareholders) in decisions about how we create value and mitigate negative impacts. Financial. How we use and create capital, including but not limited to financial capital, to add value to the financial economy. A vertical line below each box goes to a horizontal bar that says Operations & CSR. Lines connect this bar to a bar below it that says, Value Chain Impacts. An arrow to the left that goes to the two bars reads, Where do we create impacts. An arrow below that reads, How we measure up. That arrow goes to a bar at the bottom, which connects by a down arrow to the bar above it, that says Disclosure. Slide footer, BCCC, Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship, Carroll School of Management. Copyright 2023 Center for Corporate Citizenship. 

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You may measure this by looking at your financial results, looking at governance, environmental or social results, and we're going to talk a little bit about some of the social results with community involvement, employee engagement and volunteering. 

But really, it's an integrated piece that companies need to be working on through their operations and corporate citizenship. Everything works together. When it's integrated, it provides even better results. We do a survey every other year called the State of Corporate Citizenship, and in it, we ask companies about what are their business goals. And you'll see here business goals that companies are trying to achieve across all industries.

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Integration Improves Results. An empty graph with the x-axis that goes from 0% to 90% in units of 10. Down the y-axis are listed, Attract new customers, Risk management, Reduce operational cost, Reduce employee health costs, Recruit top talent, Reduce employee turnover, Secure a stable supply chain, Access to new markets, Attract new investors, Innovate new products and services, Enhance reputation, Customer retention, Reduce waste in business operations. At the right, key, red, Corporate citizenship integrated with business strategy. Grey, Corporate citizenship NOT integrated with business strategy. Footer, Copyright 2024 Center for Corporate Citizenship. 

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And when we have a group of companies that don't integrate corporate citizenship into their business strategy, we see that they're fairly successful in meeting those business goals. 

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Grey horizontal bars from each item on the y-axis go from above 50% to approximately 60-70%. 

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But when there's a group of companies that do integrate corporate citizenship with their business strategy, they're much more successful in every single business goal. 

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Red bars above the grey bars go to approximately 80%. 

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We've been seeing this for several years, and we just really feel like integrating corporate citizenship into the business is something that helps both the community and the business. 

One of the ways that companies integrate corporate citizenship is this employee engagement piece, involving employees in providing resources, giving back to the communities in things like volunteering or workplace giving programs. We do research called the Community Involvement Study, and in it we ask companies about things like their workplace giving programs. We can show that now. And their volunteering.

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Text, Company matching information for workplace giving programs. Three concentric dotted line color coded squares with a horizontal line across the center with a box on each square and diagonal lines with a box at each corner. All the lines go through a grey blank box in the center. The inner square, in tan, is labeled Disaster Relief, the next square, in taupe, is labeled Year-Round Giving, and the outer square, in dark grey, is labeled Giving Campaign. The upper right corner is labeled Percentage of employees who participated (asterisk) (median). Percentages from inner to outer, 7%, 30%, 35%. The right center is labeled Percentage of employees who participated (asterisk) (minimum), 1%, 5%, 2%. The lower right corner is labeled Percentage of employees who participated (asterisk) (maximum), 100%, 100%, 100%. The lower left corner is labeled Maximum gift amount (median), $1500, 2000, $2500. The left center is labeled Minimum gift amount (median), $25, $25, $1. The upper left corner is labeled Percentage match (median), 100%, 100%, 100%. Citation, Community Involvement Study 2023 - Figure 21. Footer, Copyright 2023 Center for Corporate Citizenship. 

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And almost 100% of companies have some way of workplace giving, asking employees to contribute to nonprofits who are in need, be it during disasters or throughout the year in different campaigns. Many companies offer matching. Not everyone does. And we do hear from companies saying, oh, I don't know if this would be a benefit to offer to our employees. It might become very expensive. What does-- what we have realized is that the participation rates are not huge. 

It's great. There's a number of employees who participate. It can get up to-- we have some companies that do say 100% of their companies-- of their employees participate. But generally, the median is about 35% at the most, 7% for things like disaster relief. What this says, though, is that employees feel good when a company is offering it. They have a greater sense of satisfaction and connection to the company, even if they're not participating in it.

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Text, Employee volunteer participation by revenue. Graph. On the x-axis, 0% to 100% in increments of 5. The y-axis is divided into thirds. The lower third is Less than $1B. The middle third is $1B to less than $5B. The upper third is $5B or more. Key, light grey, 25th to 50th percentile (median), dark grey, 50th to 75th percentile. Gold diamond, Average. In the bottom section, a bar has light grey from 20% to 33% and dark grey from 33% to 59%, with a diamond at 41%, and error bars down to 5% and up to 100%. In the center section, the bar has light grey from 14% to 25% and dark grey from 25% to 45%, with a diamond at 29%, and error bars down to 1% and up to 69%. In the upper section, the light grey is from 7% to 17% and dark grey from 17% to 42%, with a diamond at 24%, and error bars down to 1% and up to 92%. Across the top, the left end of error bars is labeled Min., the left end of the bars is labeled 25th, the center of the percentages is labeled Median (with each number bolded), the right end of the bars is labeled seventy-fifth, and the right end of the error bars is labeled Max. Citation, Community Involvement Study 2023 Figure 15 A-C. Footer, Copyright 2023 Center for Corporate Citizenship. 

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So just by offering it, companies can see a benefit in their employees being proud to work at this company. The same is true with employee volunteering. As we show here, again, participation rates in volunteer programs are not huge. In some companies they have 92%, 100%. Smaller companies tend to be having a greater participation rate. That's less than $1 billion in revenues. That's the way we're just looking at-- we split up the companies that participated in our Community Involvement Study. 

Largest companies were $5 billion or more in revenue. In the median, a smaller company is about 41%. So half of the companies were below that and half were above. The largest company is 24%. When we did this research, it is about nine months ago, nine months to a year ago in 2023. I will say it was coming out of a tumultuous time. There was a lot of changes happening in companies, where people were working, remote, hybrid, many different things.

And what we've been seeing in the past month is kind of an increased focus on employee volunteer programs and increased focus of employees wanting to be involved and being involved. So I would say this research, the next time we do it, these numbers will probably go up. One of the reasons it's important that companies are thinking about not just having the program but encouraging employees to participate in these programs is the results that we'll see going forward.

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Graphic, rows of people figures with a heart over the center. Footer, Copyright 2024 Center for Corporate Citizenship. 

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One of the questions we ask in the survey is, do you measure the connection between employees who volunteer and how engaged they are in your business and your company? Are they engaged employees in the sense of being productive and enthusiastic about working, as well as volunteering? And a little over half of the companies in our survey do this type of measurement. 

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The heart and almost half of the right hand figures disappear and are replaced by a 51%. 

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And if you see going forward, after we get through a little over half, and then the results, however, are even better. Of those folks that measure, 96% found a positive connection.  

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The figures stretch out to almost cover the screen, and a 96% is over the top. 

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They find that employees who volunteer in their programs are more engaged at work. And this is important to the bottom line of companies. This ties into real business processes. When you see that participation leads to engagement-- I'll go forward a little bit-- that engagement is engagement at a level that's not just engaging in volunteer programs but being engaged at work. 

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Text, Participation (right arrow) Engagement. Graphic, a right arrow with a figure on it with a heart in the figure. Footer, Copyright 2024 Center for Corporate Citizenship. 

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So Gallup does a state of the workplace study where they measure engagement at work, and you'll be able to see going forward that the next-- the top quartile, the number of folks who are the most engaged, they're enthusiastic about work, they show up, they help their fellow employees. They speak well of the company. And then they looked at folks who are in the bottom quartile who were not as supportive, not as engaged or were the least engaged. The folks who are most engaged were 54% less likely to leave their jobs, 41% less likely to be absent. There was 17% more productivity. Sales and profitability also went up. 

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Text, Engagement (right arrow) Performance. A right arrow bar across the center. Text in the bar at the left, Bottom Quartile of Engagement - Baseline. A long down arrow at the left below the bar with negative 54% is labeled Turnover. A shorter down arrow to the right with negative 41% is labeled Absenteeism. A shorter up arrow to the right at 17% is labeled Productivity. A slightly taller up arrow to the right with 20% is labeled Sales. A slightly taller up arrow to the right with 21% is labeled Profitability. Text below the right half of the arrow, Top quartile. Bullet points, More likely to be physically and mentally healthy. Less likely to leave a company. Have better relationships with clients and customers. Produce higher quality products on average. Citation, Top quartile vs. bottom quartile of engagement, Turnover for low-turnover organizations, Gallup. (2017). State of the American Workplace, Washington, D.C.: Gallup, Inc., What is Employee Engagement? Why It Matters and How to Sustain It, Gallup workhuman, 13 September, 2023. https colon double slash www dot workhuman dot com slash blog slash employee hyphen engagement. Footer, Copyright 2024 Center for Corporate Citizenship. 

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So this connection between employees who volunteer are more engaged, it's not a chicken and egg. The research doesn't show if volunteering is what helps employees to become more engaged or if it's that more employees do volunteer, but having that opportunity for employees is going to bring you results from employees that are already in your workforce. They're going to be able to make bigger contributions to your company. 

And this is important. Your community involvement programs connect people to the purpose, and that progresses both the business and the community. So your community involvement programs give employees opportunities to learn new things. It may give them the opportunity to show their leadership or mastery in programs that they already do.

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Text, People + Purpose = Progress. Graphic, On the left, a figure, in the center, a heart, on the right, an up arrow. Footer, Copyright 2024 Center for Corporate Citizenship. 

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It gives them new ways to connect to colleagues-- and we're going to talk more about some of these things. It helps develop networks that can power innovation, and it's important that it helps the bottom line. Employee volunteers provide value both to your business and to the communities, and I look forward to talking with you more about this. And now I'm going to turn things over to Marlene. 

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Text, Taking care of our communities. Graphic, a park with children and adults engaged in various activities, a group of people doing construction, ballet dancers doing a pas de deux, children at school desks. 

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MARLENE IBSEN: Well, thank you, Colleen. And I want to make sure that I thank Jessica and the whole Travelers Institute team for including me today. I thought I'd start with a general overview of our community approach, and then I will provide some additional detail on our employee involvement. So as a starting place, Travelers believes that strong communities-- moving on to our next slide-- are sustained by educational and economic opportunities. 

And we're really dedicated to ensuring that-- to assisting our communities in generating those kinds of opportunities.

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Text, The Travelers Promise. Taking Care of Our Customers, Communities and Each Other. At Travelers, we understand that we can only thrive as a business enterprise if our economy - and by extension our communities - thrive too. Link, travelers dot com slash community. Footer, Copyright 2024 The Travelers Companies, Inc., Logo, red umbrella. Image, same graphic as previous slide. 

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We're targeting our giving and volunteerism to help advance academic and career success, develop thriving neighborhoods and create culturally enriched communities. And on the next slide is our framework for helping us decide what investments to make and activities to develop. 

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Text, Community Pillars. Five columns with icons at the top of each, Business Alignment, Signature Programs, Thought Leadership, Access & Inclusion, Impact. A bar across the bottom says Operational Excellence. Footer, Copyright 2024 The Travelers Companies, Inc. 

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This is our baseline operating framework, and it helps us demonstrate that in Community Relations we operate as a business unit with an eye to bringing value to the business as any other company in Travelers-- any other department in the Travelers company would do. Within our department, our next slide has what I refer to as our platform. 

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Text, Ensuring Opportunity. Ensure opportunity by contributing to efforts that create strong, vibrant communities and offer pathways to success. Strategic giving programs: Continue to develop signature programs and community partnerships targeted at the intersection of Travelers' business interests, expertise and community needs. Strong employee involvement initiatives: Further align our community work with talent recruitment, retention, diversity, inclusion and development. Priority Community Outcomes. Academic and Career Success, Thriving Neighborhoods, Culturally Enriched Communities. Robust internal & external communications. Footer, Copyright 2024 The Travelers Companies, Inc. 

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This is a big election year, so maybe thinking about a platform is a way to think about what we do. We've been using this for a long time. 

Our work, where we intersect the company's interests with community needs and assets is all about ensuring opportunity. And so this exhibit is sort of our touchstone. The pillars you just saw tell us the attributes our work should have, and this reminds us what the work is all about and how we can deliver on the Travelers Promise. If you're not familiar with the Travelers Promise, it is taking care of our customers, our communities and each other.

And so of course, what we do on the community team is a big piece of ensuring that the Travelers Promise is delivered. On the right is the outcomes we are trying to help the community achieve. So I mentioned these earlier. Within each of these areas are specific-- more specific, detailed elements of what we are trying to support in the community, and we do this through giving and volunteerism. On the left are the two planks in our platforms.

These are our key strategies that we tie all of our work to. So of course, having our strategic giving programs, but then our second one is strong employee involvement initiatives. And this is all about supporting the company's efforts with culture building, developing inclusion and empathy. These are competencies that we want to build and reinforce at Travelers. And as part of that strategy, we've created Travelers Community Connections, which is a comprehensive community involvement program.

It includes matching gifts and volunteer rewards. And it's to encourage involvement and capture and report on those activities as well. So what are we seeing at Travelers?

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Trends @ Travelers. Employee involvement activities slowed during the pandemic, but are on a trajectory to return to pre-pandemic levels. On the left a bar chart with vertical bars that go, across the x-axis, from 2019 to 2024 (with 2024 listed as Goal). The y-axis goes from 20,000 to 140,000 in increments of 20,000. The bar for 2019 goes up to 130,000, 2020 about 55,000, 2021 about 58,000, 2022 above 70,000, 2023 above 100,000, and 2024 120,000. Text on the right, In Demand, Large-group, short-duration packing events, Virtual volunteering, Small-group, one-day activities, Annual Travelers Community Connections Campaign. Footer, Copyright 2024 The Travelers Companies, Inc. 

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As Colleen mentioned earlier, the pandemic really slowed employee involvement activities, but we are seeing that we are on a trajectory to get back to pre-pandemic levels. And I should also say that we've been very pleased with the growth of our numbers of employees who participate in Travelers Community Connections and use our platform to log their volunteer hours. 

We ask employees to log anything they're doing personally inside or outside of work, as well as trying to capture all of our corporately sponsored and organized team activities. But we know we're not capturing everything. We know our employees are really involved in many, many ways in their communities. This probably is just the tip of the iceberg of what's really going on all across the country and in the UK, Ireland and Canada. But we are headed back up.

We set a goal in 2023 to challenge our employees to reach 100,000 volunteer hours, and they did, indeed, log more than 100,000 hours. They beat the goal, and we were pleased with that. So we've set a goal for this year of 120,000 hours. Again, on the track to get back to where we were and hopefully exceed over the next couple of years where we were before the pandemic. The other thing we're seeing now is a big surge in large-group, short-duration community activities, which usually ends up being packing events.

There are a few other things people can do. But this is, for instance, a national sales team getting together. They've got a couple days of business training and programming going on, but they take an hour or two, and they want to have a community element to it. And we're just seeing a really big demand. I think coming out of the pandemic, teams want to get together more. They want to reinforce the Travelers Promise as part of the culture building at Travelers, and so this is something-- 

We've been doing all sorts of different kinds of activities along these lines such as reading, literacy kits that get donated to local schools or local after-school programs. During the pandemic we increased our virtual volunteering capacities. We had some virtual volunteering going on, e-mentoring type programs. But of course, with everybody not getting together in person, we and our nonprofit partners had to be creative and expand those virtual volunteering opportunities a lot.

And what we found is those are still appealing to a lot of people. It's still a great and efficient way to give your time to the community, and also you can volunteer for something that isn't necessarily in your local community and potentially with other members of your team without having to get everybody together in person. We've still got a steady interest in small-group, one-day activities. So think of things like a team going out to build a Habitat for Humanity home in their neighborhood.

That remains one of our most popular volunteer activities across the country, as well as Junior Achievement. Going into local classrooms and helping students learn about financial literacy and the economic and civic environment. Those have come back. Habitat in particular is very strong this year. We have a lot of builds planned.

And then of course, we have the annual Travelers Community Connections Campaign, which is focused on reminding everyone about our giving and volunteering programs and opportunities that we have, but also raising funds for local United Ways and their partner agencies, helping them to build and develop resilient communities. So that's the picture of where we are right now at Travelers with our employee involvement.

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Earlier slide with graphic of park and the text, Taking care of our communities. 

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And in my many years of doing this work, I thought I'd share a couple of lessons learned, some reasons that I think it's really important to have these kinds of programs. 

We've really seen that employee involvement can help bridge gulfs across age, tenure, culture and even, to some degree, power dynamics. Getting out in and doing an activity with your team can sometimes help everybody see one another in a different light and break down some of the barriers that maybe have-- are more traditional in the workplace roles.

We do think it's really important to have meaningful and well-planned experiences for employees. They want to feel like their time has been well used and they're contributing to an important cause. So making sure, if you are going to encourage employees to come together for something that the company is organizing, that you're working very closely with the nonprofit partner and you know what to expect and they know what to expect.

And we really try to make sure that employees understand what the opportunity is about, what does the organization do that they're helping, how will what they're doing on that particular day or on that particular virtual volunteer experience help support that organization's mission. So after talking a lot about all this, I thought I would share a brief video that gives you a sense of many of the kinds of activities we are doing at Travelers.

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Video, text, Ensuring opportunities that create strong, resilient and vibrant communities and pathways to success. 

[VIDEO PLAYBACK] 

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Our community. A video montage of people involved in community activities. Text, Involvement. Partnership. Commitment. Support. Stronger together. A group of people with red umbrellas. Text, Hashtag, Team Travelers. Sonia Cruz, Doctoral Candidate and Community Advocate. Text, Do it for that difference. 

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If you're going to do something, do it for that difference. Do it for that moment. Do it for one child that needs it. Do it for that one family that needs it. Do it for that area of the community that needs it. 

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Sean Ramalho - SVP, Strategic Execution Office, Travelers. Text, What cultural impact will you have? 

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It's not just about profit and dollars. It's about what cultural impact will you have on the community that you're part of. 

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Excellence. Impact. Transformation. Innovation. Leadership commitment. 

The Travelers Promise. A video montage of people engaged in group activities.

Text, Taking care of customers, communities and each other. 

Logo, Travelers. 

[END PLAYBACK] 

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Video ends. Screen names, Marlene Ibsen. Jessica Kearney, Colleen Olphert (she/her...) They appear in split screen. 

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JESSICA KEARNEY: Marlene, Colleen, thank you both for your opening comments. That was really insightful and I think really set the stage for this conversation. As we were brainstorming topics for our show, we thought, hey, wouldn't it be an interesting thing to take a look at this issue now, given that so much of how we work and how we work among our teams has changed over the last few years? So thank you both for helping us level set. 

I was just taking notes here, and some things that jumped out at me at what you both said about, Marlene, about the short duration packing events and really seeing the rise of those. I know we want to get into more of the kind of practical examples of how people can leverage and lift some of the ideas that have worked successfully for other companies. I love what you said about helping these different employee community engagement activities, helping to really span and bridge generations and different types of groups working together.

We've had several shows now about Gen Z and getting to know your Gen Z colleagues and generations in the workforce. I think that's a terrific angle. Colleen, what you mentioned about even if you're not participating in these programs, just the fact that your company or organization has them is a point of pride for your employees. So I think these are very good angles to unpack. So thank you, again. As always, we want to kick off with-- as we get into our moderated discussion, we want to kick off with an audience poll.

So if we can bring that up, we want to get a sense from the folks on the line for how their organizations are currently curating experiences for employees in the community. So select all that apply. My organization allows employee volunteering during work hours, offers paid time off to volunteer, offers a day of service, matches employee charitable donations, offers team building in our community, virtual volunteering opportunities, which we talked a little bit more about, and we'll get into some of that as well, or does not have an employee involvement strategy.

So I see all these coming in. Looks like big numbers of folks have employee volunteering during work hours. Let's go ahead and share those results. So 76% of people say they've got volunteering during work hours through their employer. Sixty percent say their employer matches employee charitable donations. Few are having a day of service or virtual volunteering opportunities, only 36% on the virtual side. So Marlene, Colleen, anything that strikes you out of this list and the results?

COLLEEN OLPHERT: I think they're tracking very close to what we've been seeing in our research. I mean, these things are all continuing to different levels inside companies.

MARLENE IBSEN: And I would agree. I think it's great that most do have something, and I think it's powerful. I think the virtual volunteering opportunities is emergent, right? As we all do more and more of our business virtually, more companies will figure out, and more nonprofits will figure out how to make those experiences valuable all around without having the traditional show up and volunteer experience.

JESSICA KEARNEY: Yeah, that's great. That's great. So Colleen, I want to give you a minute here. You talked a little bit about the Center at Boston College, which you help lead. And you mentioned you have 500 different member organizations, which I'm sure you pull lots of color and anecdotes and research from on this topic and many other topics related to corporate citizenship. How have you seen these programs evolving across your member companies and in your research, and what do you think really are the top trends today in these few years since the pandemic when it comes to getting employees out there in the community?

COLLEEN OLPHERT: Definitely. Well, I think the pandemic was the great upsetter of volunteering, as would upset so many different things. But as Marlene was mentioning, what Travelers had done was very similar. People went virtual, and for a while it was kind of trial by error. How can we volunteer virtually? Does this really make a difference? And really, people started to find some innovative ways, effective ways, things that were team building, things that were able to match individuals up with a mentee or tutor someone or do some reading.

Lots of innovative ways. And that's continued. When we poll our companies about offering virtual volunteering, there's still a great percentage that offer some sort of virtual volunteering. It helps when you have remote teams, you're a global organization. It's a way to connect people who aren't physically together. Another piece that companies have started to-- there's a slight increase in offering paid time off for volunteering, but it still hasn't changed. Even before the pandemic, about 16 hours was probably your typical amount of time a company would do for paid time off, and that's continued.

But more companies are offering it. So I think companies have seen that this is something they want to offer to their employees. Perhaps the younger generation that they're recruiting is kind of looking for something like that. And then the third piece that I would say. Acts of kindness is something that came up during COVID. And this means not a traditional volunteer opportunity but helping your neighbor.

Go buy groceries for an elderly neighbor or helping someone who doesn't have a car to get somewhere, driving them to work. And these are things that were really promoted as still being volunteering, and companies have continued to say, employees, tell us what you're doing in their neighborhoods. What are you doing in ways that aren't with, perhaps, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit but it's still contributing to the good of communities, and we want to celebrate that. So I think that's something that is good for all.

JESSICA KEARNEY: I love that, acts of kindness. I think that's a terrific way to think about it. And you talked about remote and these virtual volunteer opportunities, and Marlene, I want to dig in with you a little bit more on that too. I'm curious, just on a very practical level, if you're a manager and you're looking to set something up for your team, what are the ABCs that you found that what works and what doesn't work? Is there anything? Have you tried anything, and it's just completely fallen flat?

MARLENE IBSEN: I would say I can't think of anything that's fallen flat, so that's a plus for doing it. Right? Most of us are pretty comfortable with these kinds of technologies now, and so it's always a little bit of a gamble on who's going to be on the call and how talkative or involved they or the students, for instance, might be.

But we have that same gamble when we do in-person activities as well. I do think one of the things we've found is that starting with icebreakers is very powerful. It forces everyone to talk. You go around and whether it's just the straightforward introductions or whether it's what brought you here today or what are you looking forward to learning today, it forces everyone to immediately get involved and break down that barrier, that wall maybe that is a little different than if you were in person.

And also interactive elements throughout the experience. So whether it's a poll, like we just did, or structuring the program. For instance, if it's a pitch competition where small businesses are going to present their business pitches to Travelers individuals who are serving as judges, we would structure the program so that it wasn't just a whole slew of pitch after pitch after pitch.

We would probably make sure that the judges have an opportunity to input to each pitch while it's happening, and then ultimately do their final decision-making, however that is structured. But we try to work with the nonprofit, and many of them have great experiences and will offer advice for how things should go. But we do try to work with them to make sure it goes well, and again, that nobody feels like there isn't an opportunity to participate and-- or like they can get away without participating.

JESSICA KEARNEY: Yeah. That's great. And I think the emphasis on the icebreaker, especially when you're bringing different teams together and just making people feel comfortable and like they can fully engage and immerse in the experience is a really good one. Colleen, anything that you've seen make or break on this virtual programming or even some of the basics for other type of volunteering?

COLLEEN OLPHERT: Yeah. I do think at this point for virtual it is being thoughtful about what you're offering. During COVID, people were willing to jump on for any reason just to be able to have some connection with other folks. And so now if it's a nonprofit where you're able to do-- it's a maybe a one-on-one mentoring or it's a virtual contest, there's a certain amount of time, you know what you're doing, what your responsibilities are, and you're providing that service as a volunteer.

Or people have created some team-building opportunities where it's things-- there's a nonprofit where you're helping to map roads in remote areas to help with disaster response. And you could do that by yourself, but if four or five people from the same team log on and they're doing it and they're chatting and they're having a little conversation, it becomes a bit of a team-building as well as doing volunteering at the same time. And so those things, I think, tend to help it stay vibrant and connect it to what the employees are interested in.

JESSICA KEARNEY: Just while we're on this topic of remote volunteering, can you give me-- maybe both of you give me some examples of types of different virtual volunteering opportunities that have worked well? Like the actual work, the actual volunteer-- I think you mentioned online mentoring and some other things.

COLLEEN OLPHERT: Yeah. I think some of the ones that we've seen that have continued to be successful are when the nonprofit is set up in such a way that they have the technology, perhaps for students who are coming in, and they're able to connect with a mentor or a tutor who's at the office. And so during lunch, perhaps in school, sometimes this will happen.

So you can do the volunteering. It's successful because there's connections with the nonprofit or the school. They have the equipment. The employee's able to connect and be able to move that forward. And then I think some of the more ones that involve team building, you do need to have the icebreakers, the connections, the way-- you're building something rather than just get right to the task.

JESSICA KEARNEY: Yeah.

MARLENE IBSEN: So some of the ones we've seen that work well. BestPrep is an organization in Minnesota, where we have a lot of employee involvement. They have been at the forefront of e-mentoring for years, even pre-pandemic. And so they have a great structured curriculum where employees sign up to be mentors to high school students preparing for college, I believe, and I think college students as well. And they have a set curriculum. So monthly there's a question that the student will ask.

The mentor answers it, can answer by email. They have a minimum amount of time they're obligated to just have some face-to-face, which, again, is not necessarily in person each month. It's a small commitment, a half hour or an hour. And then during the course of the year, they set up both in-person and other virtual group activities too so that everybody sort of has a sense of being part of the larger thing in a larger community doing this. So that's one example.

We've mentioned small business pitch-type competitions have done well. Junior Achievement also has a business competition-type program where we've had judges come together. We've also had people volunteer to coach the teams to get ready for their presentations before they do the competition.

So I think those are-- and then there's the individual ones. Like Colleen mentioned, we have some partners who offer going in and translating historical documents through one of our partners with our Citizen Travelers programs, too. We have people now also through Citizen Travelers grading essays from middle schoolers about civics and democracy. So there are a lot of ways that people are engaging out there.

COLLEEN OLPHERT: And I'd add also the skills-based volunteering has-- it moved virtual, and for some times, it stayed virtual. So if there's a nonprofit partner the company has that needs some marketing expertise or some IT expertise and someone in the company is-- they can match that person up and spend an hour a month or an hour a week working with the marketing team and the nonprofit. They don't have to be located in the same city anymore. They can-- if you're a national company or a global company, you're able to help in different ways virtually that that nonprofit can really do some capacity building and move ahead in their mission to their community.

JESSICA KEARNEY: That's great. And actually, we just had a question come in from Ashley who says, where do we find these practical remote volunteer opportunities? I have a mixed team with 10 people located in different states across the U.S. and would love to promote different ways for them to get involved. I think that's a little bit what you were talking about, Colleen, but how do folks who are interested who have these distributed teams go about finding some of these nonprofits that might be able to work with them that aren't maybe geographically tied?

COLLEEN OLPHERT: I would start with the larger organizations, national organizations like United Way or Junior Achievement. Right on their website they have recognized that there's different ways to connect people in besides in-person volunteering. Programs like the center, we have on our website some resources for virtual volunteering, and there's other organizations like ours, like Points of Light, that focus primarily on corporations and volunteering. And they would list things at a global, national and perhaps down to a regional level that you're able to find some of these things.

JESSICA KEARNEY: That's great. Colleen, I want to keep it rolling with you for a minute. What are some of the obstacles you see? Obviously, we keep on talking about all the member companies that you work with. What are some of the obstacles of people who maybe want to get into this space, but they hesitate or there’s challenges that they see? Can you talk a little bit about that and how companies have overcome them?

COLLEEN OLPHERT: Definitely. I think when I hear from community involvement professionals, they want to expand the volunteer program or they want to start a volunteer program, and there’s this sense of it’s going to cost too much money, it’s going to take employees away from the work. One of the things that we try and give is this business case to the community involvement professional, or to the individual if it’s an employee trying to start this, that the research is showing that employees who volunteer are more engaged.

Individuals who volunteer tend to be healthier. That might be less absenteeism. There’s these team building-type volunteering that can create innovation and connections. And so for a short-term cost, you tend to have a long-term return on investment in keeping employees engaged, keeping them doing innovative things. And so that’s the sort of thing that we try to help employees or community involvement professionals be able to build that business case to sell it to senior management or get the buy-in from whoever needs to sign off on this and then just try it.

JESSICA KEARNEY: Yeah. Yeah, that’s great. Marlene, I want to pick up on something that you said earlier, which was there’s a lot of volunteering that’s already happening among your employees that may not be captured by your organization things, whether they’re on the PTA or the Little League. How can organizations harness that existing power of employees volunteering in the community, or even help them determine a direction or a strategy based on what employees are already doing?

MARLENE IBSEN: Sure. I think there’s a few ways to go about this. Particularly in smaller companies, often doing a poll, understanding what employees are involved in, and if there’s anything that seems to consistently rise to the top where a majority of individuals are involved in a particular type of cause or even a specific charity, then finding ways to support it as an overall organization can be really valuable.

The other thing we’ve learned is a lot of employees are happy to participate if they know what’s important to the company and what’s aligned with the business. So even a small operation, if you can identify a cause that aligns with your business, so maybe financial literacy or safe driving for an insurance agency, employees are excited to jump in and get involved in ways once the company explains why this is important and why this is so critical both to the community and to the company.

And then I think sometimes people—you’ll find out that one particular office or location has already been doing, say, drives or volunteer activities for one specific organization. And so maybe building on picking a different office or location each year or a different department who has a favorite cause could be another way of understanding what employees are involved in and how you might support it.

JESSICA KEARNEY: Yeah. So scaling, learning from pilots in one area and scaling what’s successful. That’s great. I also heard you mention just getting employees excited. We had a question come in about just to start to integrate some of these audience questions. Have you both seen, or can you maybe share an example of a time when you've both seen just that moment. Right?

Like we're doing this for a reason. We're doing this to connect to mission and to purpose. Have you seen those opportunities where people just light up, and it's clear that you've made the connection and people are excited and they're engaged? What does that look, what does that feel like, and maybe can you give us some examples?

MARLENE IBSEN: OK. I have too many examples. I'm so fortunate to be in the seat I'm in at Travelers. It's been such a privilege to be able to connect to the community in this way and help be that bridge between the company's interests and community needs and assets. I think one of the ones that was really powerful for me was after Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.

In 2018 we brought a group of employees, largely connected through our Hispanic and Latino and Allies Diversity Network, but a number of others led by our CEO, Alan Schnitzer, to rebuild a baseball field that had been destroyed and adding a playground to a local park. What we found was the community there, even though there was so much need for repairing roofs and getting electricity back and getting the schools open again, when we talked to local leaders in that community partnering with the nonprofit-- All Hands Volunteers, who's who we worked with at the time.

What we learned was, when we sort of said, what can we as Travelers do? We don't have an office there, but we're willing to bring some people in. How can we help? What we learned was because schools were not operating fully again, there were a lot of kids hanging around all day without a lot of safe places to play, and baseball is such an integral part of their culture and their community activities down there.

They said if we could get the baseball field back up and running-- a couple different ones had been destroyed, so if we had even one that in the short term we could use, that would be so powerful to us. So after a massive hurricane where people are displaced and struggling, you don't necessarily think that building a baseball field is going to be the thing. But it was incredible. Our employees felt so connected. We had a big gathering in the community at the end of the day after the baseball field so they could officially open it and play an inning or so of baseball, and people were so appreciative.

Our employees were so connected to it and felt so overwhelmed by the opportunity to be a part of it, even though, let me tell you, they worked really, really hard in very hot and humid weather for that day and the next day, half a day as well. So that's one for me that was just incredible, and people really connected over it.

COLLEEN OLPHERT: I'm at a disadvantage because we hear about these, but we don't often get to participate in these types of events. Once a year though at our conference, we will make sure we have some type of volunteer activity. Travelers one year helped the participants at the conference put together 500 emergency relief bags, like a disaster response bag. So if there was a flood or a fire, you had it to grab. It had all your important papers and various things.

Those types of events at our conference allow people to participate, to help us in some community, to learn about a organization and/or a topic, and there's a lot of pride in that. So folks are glad. They're enjoying the learning and they're enjoying the networking, and then they're also being able to connect to something bigger than themselves. And I think that just is the piece of volunteering that helps take people out of themselves and out of the day-to-day grind, but appreciate that they had that opportunity to do that.

JESSICA KEARNEY: Yeah. That's-- oh, go ahead.

MARLENE IBSEN: I'm sorry. I was looking at one of the questions that popped up was around how can leaders of teams promote community engagement without their direct reports feeling pressured. I think that's a really great point to keep in mind. It was sort of what Colleen was talking about when she said, even though the percentage of employees who take advantage of matching gifts or volunteer rewards programs may not really be that high, it is appreciated that the company is willing to do that and values that, and I think this is a similar thing.

I've done it with my team, too. Sometimes we call it voluntold or whatever, but usually we say we think it would be great to go out and do something as a team. Would everyone like to do that? And either say here's the opportunity presented to us. We'd love it if you join, but it's optional. Or ask employees are there any organizations they're connected to where they think that they might value from our team of x number of people.

If you're at Travelers, our Community Relations team can absolutely help you find opportunities and think about ways to present it. Often when we're doing the kit packing or something like that, that's built into an agenda of a program. But if it's just taking your team offsite for a day, it can be optional. It doesn't have to be required fun, so to speak.

JESSICA KEARNEY: Can you talk a little bit more about these packing events and the nuts and bolts? Because I find it very interesting, because there's some questions coming in about how do you balance not having enough hours in the day but still wanting to give back to the community and be involved and just making time for it all. And so we've got this model that you were mentioning that it could be part of. It could be an hour or two as part of your department's offsite or your daylong meetings that you're doing. How does that work in practice and how do you make that come together and make sure that it really sparks a connection in people?

MARLENE IBSEN: Sure. So we work with organizations like the United Way, Happy Hope Factory. My team is going, there's others, there's others. I'm not thinking of all of them. But we've-- because we've had this demand since COVID, we kind of have a general idea of the organizations who are out there, what they offer, what community needs are that we can help address with these time-limited events.

And so we will talk to the team about what their time limit is, how many people they have, if they have a particular interest or theme, and try to match the right opportunity. And then for us, we do require that the packing event participants have some sense of what they're doing. That it's not just go through the lunch line and throw something into a backpack, and I don't really know what it's about. We will ask the nonprofit to send a representative to come in and talk about what their mission is, what impact these kits will have, who they're going to.

In some cases, we even have nonprofits who have speakers bureaus, and they will bring in someone who has benefited from their services and wants to tell their story and speak about it. But we do really try to make it clear to employees that it's not busywork. That there is a real impact and purpose to what they're doing. And then, of course, make the tie to Travelers and the Travelers Promise and culture. And so why are we even taking time from a business meeting to do something like this?

JESSICA KEARNEY: Yeah. Yeah.

COLLEEN OLPHERT: Just to add to that. If it's not a meeting where you have a certain period of time, some companies have created something in the break room or in the lunchroom. If you have a type of workplace that folks are in a space and it's not a time that they're able to get away except for lunch, then there's the opportunity during that time to participate in some sort of packing. And it goes throughout a day or throughout a week with the goal to put school backpacks together for a local school or something like that.

JESSICA KEARNEY: Colleen, what do you think are the key elements of a successful employee volunteer program? Are there any angles or strategies as you're putting one together that it's just absolutely must do?

COLLEEN OLPHERT: So I think making sure it's voluntary, so as to that first, that most recent question. But the choice. So this is something. As a company you may have a social aspect that you want to impact change. You're looking at financial literacy or STEM, whatever it is. Your volunteering program should probably include some of that, but you shouldn't stay bounded with that because your employees have so many various interests and things that they want to get involved in. I think Gen Z, a lot around the environment is something that they're passionate about.

And so you're trying to create this choice where employees can-- this is something they're passionate about. They can do the volunteering on their time and talk about it or count their hours. They're bringing their whole self to work, and they're feeling respected for that. And then also, if you're offering various programs, you have some things that are an hour, some things that are on Saturdays, things that you could bring your family to, things that teams do, individuals. So the variety and choice is really important to be a successful volunteer program.

JESSICA KEARNEY: Yeah. That's great. Marlene, can you talk a little bit more about some of Travelers signature community involvement programs and maybe some lessons that we can derive from them?

MARLENE IBSEN: Sure. So one of the main things that we have we call our Travelers Community Connections Field Office Grants. And this is where any of our offices outside of Hartford and-- in the U.S.-- outside of Hartford and Saint Paul, where we have critical mass and a number of ongoing volunteer activities all the time can bring together a group of five or more employees to volunteer for a nonprofit in their community. And then they, together with that nonprofit, can apply for a grant to either specifically support the cost of that activity.

If you're going to be going out, painting a rec center for a day and you need to buy paint and other supplies, some of the costs can go to that. We also recognize that any volunteer activity takes time, staff time for the nonprofit. So even though they might be benefiting from our labor, there are costs to them coordinating. And we might just, depending on the kind of volunteer activity it is and if it's a really great fit with Travelers, it might just be an outright grant to the organization to support their ongoing efforts.

So we look at it in terms of the quality of the volunteer experience, how well the organization aligns with our key focus areas, how many people are going to be involved, all of those things. And then there's an opportunity for grant funding to support that. Other opportunities, other of our signature programs we have occasional involvement. So resilience and disaster response, Travelers Fortifies Communities is one of our signature programs, and we often are able to plug in volunteer activities for building homes post-disaster back to better building standards, which is the IBHS Fortified Homes standard.

We also have a small business support program where we use our incredibly talented individuals-- this is skills-based volunteering, many from our risk control area, from our cyber technology area to help small businesses understand risks and how to address them. So we do try to tie these volunteer activities to our signature programs. And then I think in terms of lessons learned, one of the things I always say is you should probably practice saying no.

There will always be more demand from the nonprofit communities and your employees, probably, than you can meet corporately, whether it's dollars or just capacity-wise for [INAUDIBLE] For how you'll select your organizations. Again, is it that you want to be employee driven, grassroots, or do you want to target some global or national programs that really fit well and align with your business. And then as part of that, are you looking for partners not just to write a dollar grant to, but to come with organized volunteer activities so you don't have as heavy a lift there.

And then also understanding that there are costs involved. Setting a budget or a cap for what you can do around these programs, whether it's providing support directly to the volunteer-- the organization or paying for the costs of supplies for a particular opportunity, whether it is a matching gifts or Dollars for Doers, which is our volunteer rewards program. Knowing what you can handle. I think earlier there was a question to how do we offer it if we're not sure what the cost is going to be.

We have a budget on our program every year, and we let employees know that while we would love it if they blow through the cap because it means they're that much more involved in the community, we have a limit and there may be a point-- we try to budget smartly around it and account for growth most years, but we are clear that we have a limit on the budget for those various programs, and hopefully we're not going to bump up against it during the year.

JESSICA KEARNEY: Yes. Have to have the budget. That's always important, right?

MARLENE IBSEN: Yeah.

JESSICA KEARNEY: So I want to close. Marlene-- I mean, I'm sorry, Colleen, I want to ask you, any mistakes that you see? Any lessons that other people have learned that we could learn from so that we don't have to make them ourselves? And then I want to just close by getting any resources from either of you that people can go back to, and then I'll preview some of the upcoming programs.

COLLEEN OLPHERT: Great. I would give a word of advice, which is just that coming from a corporation, to put the ego aside and recognize that, though you all are experts in your industry, you're not experts in the volunteer nonprofit world. And so engaging the nonprofits and then engaging employees in what they're interested in is the best way to succeed at these types of programs. Where we have seen it fail is when a company is like, we have this great idea and we're going to do x, y and z, and hey, nonprofit, you should be our partner because we want to do x.

And that nonprofit is not set up correctly, the employees aren't interested. So start with those conversations. Start small, too. Do some trial and error. See what works. And especially if you're thinking about a longer-term partnership, you want to test the waters a little bit, see if it's a good match. And I think also think about the long term if you're going to do a long-term partnership, which is have serious conversations. Do your values align with the values of that nonprofit? What are the future goals? How do you both measure success?

Make sure you're on the same page so that it's a good fit going forward. So those are my words of advice, and I welcome you all to our website, ccc.bc.edu. I can throw it into the chat there. We have a lot of resources of reports, research, best practices. You can attend our webinars and be able to download a lot of information even if you're not a member of the center. We try and really help anyone get started and move forward with these types of programs. So glad to be here for you.

JESSICA KEARNEY: Wonderful. Marlene, any closing thoughts or resources?

MARLENE IBSEN: I would say just quickly consider the business impacts that you're hoping to gain by doing this. Whether that's around engagement and involvement, whether it's around marketing and business prospecting, and then clearly communicate the goals and the guardrails for the programs. I think to Colleen's point, having a plan, thinking about it, maybe starting small. It is a business operation, so you should think about it that way.

JESSICA KEARNEY: Wonderful. Marlene, Colleen, thank you so much for the insights over the last hour. This was a new topic for us on Wednesdays with Woodward, and I think it was an hour well spent. Appreciate all the insights. And now I'll preview some of the things that we have coming up. So thank you again, everyone, for joining us and for tuning in. There's a link in our survey about today's program in the chat, so please let us know what you thought about the session and also any other ideas that you'd like to see us explore on future programs.

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If you haven't heard, we've got a podcast. The Travelers Institute Risk and Resilience podcast is now available on Apple, Spotify, Google, so you can subscribe today and see the link in our chat. 

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We've also got some great events coming up over the next few weeks. 

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Text, Upcoming Webinars. Two text boxes. On the left, Citizen Travelers at the Travelers Institute, A Series on Civic Engagement. March 14 -- Teammates, Leaders, Citizens: The Unifying Power of Athletics. On the right, Wednesdays with Woodward (registered trademark) Webinar Series. March 13 -- Unpacking the Surge in Mass Tort Legal Advertising. April 3 -- 2024 Economic Pulse: Legislative, Industry and Business Trends. April 8 -- Special Monday Edition: Livestream from the Lifesavers Conference: Painting a Clearer Picture: How Technology Innovations are improving Distracted Driving Data. On the lower left, a red button with the text, Register: travelers institute dot org. 

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On March 13th, you can join us as we unpack the surge in mass tort legal advertising, that's coming up. And then on the very next day, March 14th, Citizen Travelers takes a look at how athletics can be a platform to make a positive impact in one's community. We heard Marlene talk a little bit about Citizen Travelers during today's session as well. 

On April 3rd, we're going to be joined by the Chief Economist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce with a look at the economic and public policy trends that are impacting businesses today. And then on March-- I'm sorry Monday, April 8th, we're going to be at the Lifesavers Conference live in Denver. We're going to be livestreaming our session there on the data around distracted driving and what our latest insights and learnings are from the data today. So please join us on Monday, April 8, for that one.

And then on April 30th, the Travelers Institute team is going to be in San Antonio, Texas, for our National Cybersecurity Education Tour. So if you're in the area or if you're in any of the other cities listed coming up, please join us for lunch and learn a little bit about cybersecurity education.

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So as always, please visit us at travelersinstitute.org, connect with us on LinkedIn, subscribe to our podcast, and thank you so much for being here this afternoon. We really appreciate it. 

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