Kim: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of The Life Travelers podcast. I’m super excited about this one today. I have my guest here, Greg Landmark, and we are talking all benefits and wellness here today. So, Greg, welcome to the show.

Greg: Thank you. I’m excited to talk. Yeah.

Kim: Yeah, I’m super excited to have you. I just think this is such an important topic for our audience being, you know, potential talent, folks that might want to apply and join us here at Travelers. So, benefits is so key. So, thanks for being here today to talk about it. So, can you, first, just introduce yourself to our guests and maybe give a little background on how you got to Travelers?

Greg: Awesome. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for this opportunity. So, again, my name is Greg Landmark. I am head of Total Rewards and People Analytics at Travelers. I started my career, I have a math/finance background, so I started my, my career as an actuarial consultant. So, I use that math to start my career as an actuary, did that for a little while, and then I decided I wanted to do more broad-based consulting. I loved that, too. But then, I was doing a pitch on something to Travelers at the time, and they didn’t buy my product, but they said, hey, we want to hire you to come to our organization. So, that’s a lot of my background. I was in consulting for a while, and that’s a short 25 plus years ago when that conversation happened. So, I’ve been at Travelers for a long time and have loved it, but I was able to use that consulting background to lead me into the career I have today.

Kim: Awesome, awesome. And when you are speaking with folks about benefits and wellness, total rewards at Travelers, what are some of those key benefits that you would tell folks about right off the bat?

Greg: No, absolutely. So, I, there’s three things that are core almost all the time.

Kim: Okay.

Greg: And of those three things, I’m going to start with why it’s unique at Travelers and I think we can differentiate ourselves amongst those three. And then I would talk about other things that we do that make us stand out. And the core ones that everyone thinks about is, health care’s one. Health care’s a hot topic in the, in the country, and it’s a hot topic for employees and stuff like that. So, most companies offer health care, but it’s a key employee, a benefit at Travelers as well. But at Travelers, we don’t just provide a health care benefit. We’re going to help you succeed at health care. That’s really an important differentiator that I think we do really well, and I can speak to that more as we’re in our conversation, but that’s one thing.

The other thing is most companies have a 401k plan. We have a 401k and a pension plan. So, we share that responsibility. We had, we have both. I think that’s valuable, and I think it’s helpful differentiator to our workforce.

And lastly, and this is one that people care a lot about is, paid time off. Right? And I think it aligns with wellness, and we support paid time off. We have a really strong paid time off program. Related to that though, at Travelers, we recognize that employees will have special needs at certain times in their life or they wish they had just a few extra days, and so, we allow people to purchase up to six additional PTO days each year. And if they don’t use them, they can cash them out at the end of the year.

Kim: Yup.

Greg: And a lot of people use that benefit. So, that’s a valuable extra benefit. So, those are, like, the core.

Kim: Yeah.

Greg: But I think the other thing that makes Travelers unique is we think about, kind of, what are people’s needs beyond that? Like, what are this, like, the, hyperfocus needs that are unique to individuals? So, like, we have, for people that have student loans, and student loans are a big topic in the United States, and, so, we have a Paying It Forward Savings Program that helps match your student loans with 401(k) match dollars. And so, there’s more details around it, but that’s a unique benefit that I think I would want candidates to consider when they come to Travelers.

We also have a caregiving support benefit. So, if you have a parent that lives in a different city and you think about, how am I going to support them from afar, right? There’s a, we have a benefit that helps you do that successfully. And so, it’s a great, it’s great from that perspective.

And then I’d also, maybe the last one I’d mention right now, we’ll get into more, too, is Travelers is really leaned into mental health on a significant… We’ll talk about that in more detail throughout this conversation I hope and, but I would just say, we provide, you know, up to eight free therapy sessions and eight free coaching sessions a year through a product that’s very user friendly so that people have access to therapists. The average time to therapist, if someone wants to see one within our plan, is 1 to 2 days. Kind of, in the real world is, like, 30 days, you know what I mean? So, I’m, I’m thrilled. I’m proud of that, too. And I’d want people to, kind of, know, I think it reflects the importance of benefits and the employment relationship at Travelers.

Kim: Yup, definitely. Thank you. That’s a great overview, Greg. I want to, I want to almost break down some of those. So, you mentioned a couple of things I just want to circle back to, the first being medical. Right? Health insurance. You said, we’ll help you succeed in health, in, in health care. What does that mean?

Greg: Yeah. So, health care is really complicated, right? So, there’s, there’s a few aspects of, it’s like, what type of health care benefit is best for you? And we have, what we’d say, PPO plans or traditional deductibles, coinsurance but, like what people are most used to. We also have a plan that’s copay- based only where, you know what, let’s, let’s purchase health care the way you purchase other products. So, when you go in for any type of health care, you can select which health care provider you want to go to in the higher qualities, lower price. But what you pay is a co-pay up front. You just, no, like, follow-up payments and something. So, you’re purchasing health care like anywhere else. And so, that’s unique. So, the design of the health care is unique at Travelers.

The other thing I would say that stands out is we really want to support how you navigate through health care. So, what that means is we will, we have a vendor partner that helps people find the highest quality health care providers, and it goes so far as to actually schedule any appointments for them. So, if you, and then we have expert second opinions. So, if you have something you’re concerned about, we have free expert second opinions that come with that.

Kim: That’s great.

Greg: And we have, we have those types of services. And then for a lot of specialized areas, we have unique point solutions that help people succeed. So, it’s not just about offering the benefit, but it’s helping you make the right selection, helping you navigate and then helping you succeed in healthcare.

Kim: It’s that education, that consulting piece. Right?

Greg: Absolutely.

Kim: And now you mentioned as well, turning away from, from health care, you mentioned the student loan benefit, the Paying It Forward Savings Program. I know that you match, right, what folks would put into their 401(k), you match towards their loans? So, how does it, how does that work?

Greg: Yeah. So, it’s, this is a great, great question. And proud of how we set out, set out on this. So, the whole intent is, we respect that a lot of people have student loans coming out of school or through their schooling experience, right?

Kim: Right.

Greg: And so, a lot of people have to decide, should I contribute to my 401(k) or should I pay down my student loan? And we would say, you know what, we should contribute to the 401(k) as a company on your behalf regardless of that decision. So, if you can contribute to the 401(k), we’ll match dollar for dollar up to 5% there. If you cannot, but you can contribute to, but you do have to pay off your student loan, we’ll match that up to 5%, too, and combined, it’s up to the 5%, but we’re, we’re going to match either or depending on your ability to pay, you know, so…

Kim: So, I can pay down my debt, but I can also know that Travelers has my back to be, you know, putting some money into my future.

Greg: Perfect. Travelers has your back. That’s a good way to say it.

Kim: I got it. Okay.

Greg: That’s perfect.

Kim: Yeah, that’s, that’s great.

Greg: And I should have maybe mentioned, if you don’t mind, up front, when I talked about the benefits that we have.

Kim: Yeah.

Greg: And I’ll get to it a little, I’ll talk to it more, but we do have this concept of, we really want to support people physically, financially, mentally. I think of all areas of wellness from that perspective.

Kim: Right.

Greg: And the only thing I’d say about that, too, is we really want people to succeed at work and in life. And benefits plays a very important role in that.

Kim: Totally, like student loans, like some of those things you might not think of when you initially hear benefits.

Greg: Agreed, agreed.

Kim: Totally. Okay. Let me, let me steer us a little bit towards corporate wellness programs. So, like, I know wellness is one of those pieces, right?

Greg: Yeah, yeah.

Kim: So, can you, can you talk or provide almost, like, an overview of some of those wellness programs we offer here?

Greg: Absolutely. So, again, wellness is so important. And I think we think about it as physical, mental, financial, think in three areas of wellness that we support. And then the, the one thing I’d say on top of that is we recognize the need to have wellness champions that support it. So, in addition to the programs we offer, we have, at more than our 50 largest locations, we have wellness champions that help support those initiatives. So, you can feel the importance of wellness throughout Travelers.

Kim: And those wellness champions, Greg, they’re employees?

Greg: They’re employees. Yeah, that’s part of their role. They do their job, but in addition to that, they’re so passionate about wellness that they say, hey, we want to locally support people in wellness. So, I think that’s an added benefit we have at Travelers as well. So, I’m, I’m proud of that.

When I think about, like, each of those areas, and I can get into more detail on physical, you know, financial and mental, so, if I think about our physical wellness programs, we, it’s interesting. We have a culture that likes to compete sometimes and interact and so, we have a, we have a lot of walking challenges and things like that. So, we have tools that help support people in their wellness initiatives and challenges and stuff. And we have app-based classes that people can use, like, from a physical wellness as well. But in addition to that, we have programs that support weight health and stuff like that. So, from a physical standpoint, we have virtual physical therapy that’s available, too, to support. So, there’s a lot of…

Kim: Nice.

Greg: …things that support physical wellness.

If I talk about mental wellness, and this is, you know, this is so, important, and what I would say is we have, I just mentioned before about, through our mental wellness program, employees have up to eight, you know, free sessions with a therapist, eight free coaching sessions, as well as a lot of cognitive, app-based things that they can do with our vendor and stuff as well that helps them succeed mentally. We also have the, the caregiving support program that supports people’s mental wellness. So, thrilled about that, too.

And then, I would say, financial wellness, you know, in, in addition to our Paying It Forward Savings Program, which, again, matches people’s student loan payments with 401(k) payments, in addition to that, we have something called goal booster that helps people build an emergency savings account and things like that. And then we have, a lot of, we maximize the use of our vendors by providing webcasts and one-on-one counseling in all of these areas to help people succeed.

Kim: Yeah. Yeah, I know, I personally, you know, I’ll get invites to various webinars and things that are about financial health, are about stress management, you know, there are all those different areas. And I’ve joined quite a few. I’ve benefited a lot, even if it’s chair yoga, you know, I mean, it can, it can really bring a bright spot to the day.

Greg: Our culture is interesting because across a lot of our vendors, it feels like we have a disproportionate amount of people that engage in some of those just because I think it’s part of our culture. People want to succeed, and they want to take advantage of the programs we have.

Kim: Absolutely. I know, especially physically. When it comes to, to the mental health, though, Greg, you know, there’s such a stigma still, unfortunately, and, and I know we offer these programs, but what is Travelers doing to combat that mental health stigma?

Greg: Yeah, it’s a great question. So, it’s a privilege to work at Travelers regarding mental health for a few reasons. Our CEO, every year in October, he does the all-employee meeting, he’ll talk about benefits and for a number of years, he’ll always put up this slide that says, shatter the stigma. And he puts that up there and he himself, from that platform, talks about the importance of mental health and to shatter that stigma. We’ve had, you know, our CFO has talked passionately about the importance of mental health. And we have a, we have that, a video of that that employees can see and it’s so powerful.

Kim: Yeah.

Greg: And then I am proud of the, the other benefits that we offer and the way that we promote them to your, to your point about, we’re promoting the benefits we offer. We make it available and easy for people to use…

Kim: Yup.

Greg: …and it just shows how culturally we’re embracing mental health. In fact, it’s incredible the amount of utilization we get in those programs.

Kim: Absolutely. As far as employee involvement goes, we talked briefly about the wellness champions. My videographer and I earlier today were actually, popped into a yoga session to get a little bit of footage for, for social media. What are some of those programs that they run and, and how do they get involved? You know, how much is their involvement?

Greg: Yeah, yeah. So, again, it’s part of our culture. There’s people that are especially passionate about it. We want to lean into that passion and help, help them help others, you know, succeed in wellness and so, we, I think these, a lot of programs that we offer, often the wellness champions are promoting our programs, but often they’re running, like you said, you had a yoga session that you saw. Today on The Link here, they had a gratitude where they’re painting rocks, and it says gratitude. As you’re on your way to lunch, you have a, can have this rock that says, here’s something I’m grateful for. And I think that it’s interesting because I wasn’t sure how that was going to play out, but the energy around it is pretty high. But then there’s also, like, as the weather’s getting better, there’s a lot of walking groups that they’ll, they’ll sponsor or different events they’ll sponsor just to, kind of, meet people where they are, varied opportunities, try to support wellness and again, build on that culture.

Kim: And build on that friendly competition.

Greg: Yeah, that’s part of Travelers.

Kim: I know we, we definitely feel it in my department. It’s really fun with the step challenges and things so. As far as, you know, benefits go, can you share any stories or examples of some employees, or stories you’ve heard through your time here, that have benefited from our, our wellness programs or our benefits programs?

Greg: Yeah, yeah. I’ll do a few and I’ll try to even hit each, each area of wellness from that perspective. So, so, I think that we have stories of employees that, and having been here for a long time, I see, you know, when people retire, they’re at the end of their career, and how grateful they are for the wealth that they’ve accumulated by having both a pension and a 401(k).

Kim: Absolutely.

Greg: And being focused on the education that we provide to help them save for retirement and all those things. So, it’s humbling often to hear people succeed at retirement. So, that’s, kind of, from that perspective, I think is stories that I hear often. Then, other stories that we hear from, like, from a wellness perspective, like I talked about the expert second opinions and, and it’s, it’s been interesting because our CEO, at some of those meetings, has shared some of these, these stories as well and had, like, videos of the people. But I’ll just, I’ll share a few.

So, if I think about that expert second opinion, there’s a family that was having, challenged in having a child and they got an expert second opinion, the person was able to help them understand what was the most challenging thing. We, we have a number of family building support programs that help them, and they were able to have children, and they had twins, and they have, I have a picture of their twins and, kind of, what… The journey they went through to start a family and to know that Travelers was part of that journey, and we helped them? Priceless. I, it’s so important.

And we have family building support, let me talk about caregiving support. We have an employee whose mother lived in a different part of the country, and the employee got a call that the mother was driving on the wrong side of the road and there was issues with the mother and all these things, and they were struggling because they didn’t know what to do. How do I support my mother, who lives somewhere else, who’s really mentally challenged to live independently?

Kim: Right.

Greg: And that’s not an easy conversation, really, for, for anybody or anything. So, we have this benefit where they reached out to this concierge, the concierge gets involved with them and their siblings, and with the parent in this case. It could be with a child, too, but in this case, was the parent. And they helped say, here are different assisted living choices, here’s in-home support, and that employee was able to get their mother the support they needed, get them to the right assisted living, and in a way that was respectful to the mother and that the employee felt good about and the whole family felt great about. So, it was, like, life-changing for them.

Kim: Absolutely. It’s that guiding light in such a time of turmoil.

Greg: Yeah. It’s incredible. And then I think, like, on some of the physical wellness benefits that we’ve provided, we’ve had, you know, different things from, you know, people’s weight health where they’ve achieved the goals that they wanted to achieve from that standpoint or even the, when I talk about, like, some of the physical therapy help that we provide…

Kim: Right.

Greg: …where people are doing activities that they didn’t think were available to them and stuff like, that. So, we have, across the spectrum, we have success stories. And I would say, you know, what, what are some of the things that motivates me on the benefits side? It’s about impacting people’s lives. And through our benefit programs, we get many opportunities to impact the lives of our employees. And so, we take that seriously and…

Kim: I can tell even just sitting here, like, looking at you telling the stories, I’m like, I can.

Greg: It’s emotional.

Kim: Yeah, I can tell. It means so much to you.

Greg: Yeah.

Kim: In the future, looking ahead, what new benefits or wellness initiatives are you excited about?

Greg: Yeah, that’s a, that’s a great question. So, if I think about, you know, so, we’ve talked about mental health, we’ve added a benefit around sleep, family building support, virtual physical therapy, caregiving, we’ve, health care navigation, we’ve done the co-pay based medical plans. These are all, like, things that are, kind of, in the, in the world right now that we’ve, we’ve spent time on. So, I think, I think we try to be at the forefront of innovation. And I think that’s part of our employment brand. So, a lot of times when people hear about new innovations in benefits, like, the caregiving support I talked about earlier.

Kim: Right.

Greg: We try to be leaders in that space. So, two things stand out to me. It’s, you know, staying aware of what’s hot in the market. And, and if I, if I’d say one next thing that’s interesting, and this, we can have a whole conversation on this topic, it’s gene cell therapy, where there’s certain procedures now, gene therapy procedures, that cure some things that have been difficult for society. They’re very rare and very rarely used, but for those that can use them, it’s life-changing for sure.

Kim: Yeah.

Greg: But the other thing I want to do is lean into the member experience and the awareness of employees. I want people to know that whatever the issue they’re having, that they have access to the right support at the right time, you know, for the right purpose. And I still think there’s, there’s more we can do in that space.

Kim: Yeah.

Greg: I’m actually optimistic that AI can help us play a bigger role on that. So, I’m thinking there’s opportunities in that space going forward. So, I, when I look ahead, those are some things I look forward to.

Kim: Definitely. I mean, I, for one, can’t wait to see what you do. I mean, everything you all have done, even in the most recent couple of years, has been huge.

Greg: Thank you.

Kim: So, I’m really looking forward to it. Greg, anything… Well, I know we covered a lot, but anything we didn’t cover that, that you think is important to mention?

Greg: I think, really important, if I were to close with something, I would close with this. Travelers has a stated purpose of taking care of our customers, our communities and each other. Part of taking care of each other is helping people to be well, physically, mentally, financially, through the benefits that we offer. And we take that very seriously at Travelers. So, it’s part of our stated purpose. Our benefits are aligned to that. It’s part of our culture, it’s part of our brand.

So, I would end by saying, we work really hard to impact the lives of our employees so that they can succeed in these ways. So, I hope, I hope that having this chance, whoever listens to this, I hope they come away from this recognizing that culture, recognizing that brand, recognizing how we’re trying to impact lives.

Kim: Recognizing how much it matters here.

Greg: It matters. Thank you.

Kim: And for folks who are listening, first of all, thanks for joining us once again. Secondly, if you’d like to see all of the benefits that Greg and I discussed today, kind of, laid out in our benefits brochure, no matter where you are in the world, you can always go to our careers website, that’s travelers.com/careers, under the Life at Travelers tab, there is the Benefits page. So, definitely check it out. Or you can simply type in travelers.com/benefits. So, definitely check it out. Thanks for joining us, Greg. Thanks so much for being here. Really, really appreciate it.

Greg: Thank you so much.

Kim: And for all our listeners, we’ll be back again soon with another episode for you. And until then, take care.