Human Capital Management

We owe our success to our extraordinary talent. Our future success requires that we continue to attract, develop and retain top talent and maintain our unique culture – a culture that embodies our foundational values of honesty, integrity and accountability and is built on four components: putting Travelers first, long-term thinking, collaboration and a commitment to everyone else’s success. Our approach to human capital management starts with our innovative talent acquisition strategies, which are designed to help us attract the best people from a broad pool of talent. When an employee joins Travelers, we seek to provide them with opportunities that foster personal and professional growth and an inclusive environment in which our employees feel valued and engaged, allowing them to maximize their potential. And throughout their careers with us, we seek to provide our employees with comprehensive benefits and equitable and competitive compensation plans.

Board Oversight

Our Board of Directors takes an active role in overseeing our human capital management strategy, including our initiatives to shape our workforce and workplace to drive business performance and ensure that we are well positioned for the future. Our Chief Human Resources Officer – a member of our Management and Operating Committees – and other senior executives regularly present to the Board on these matters, including on the progress the company has made over time. Additionally, consistent with its charter, the Nominating and Governance Committee meets with the company’s CEO to review and discuss succession matters at least annually. The Nominating and Governance Committee of the Board also meets regularly with senior management, including our Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer, to review and discuss our strategies to encourage diversity and inclusion within our company. In addition, pursuant to its charter, the Compensation Committee of the Board, which is advised by an independent compensation consultant, reviews and approves the company’s general compensation philosophy and objectives. The Compensation Committee also meets with senior management on a regular basis to discuss the company’s practices designed to help ensure equitable pay across the organization.

At Travelers, our culture is the foundation of our business and has driven our success for decades. And as stewards of a thriving business that is more than 165 years old, we have a responsibility to pass on our unique culture to the next generation of Travelers employees. We’ve identified at least four components of our culture – the essential elements that make us who we are and power all that we do.

• Putting Travelers First. When we come to work focused on satisfying our mission of creating shareholder value and fulfilling our purpose of taking care of our customers,  communities and each other, we achieve an outcome that is greater than the sum of its parts.
• Long-Term Thinking. As much as we’re focused on our results for the next quarter, we manage for success over the next quarter century.
• Collaboration. True collaboration allows us to take risks, challenge assumptions and – ultimately – make our best business decisions.
• Commitment to Everyone Else’s Success. It’s powerful to walk in the door each morning and know that more than 30,000 colleagues are rooting for you.

By maintaining and strengthening our foundational cultural values with the same long-term perspective that we bring to everything we do, we will continue to leverage the expertise developed over years of experience while, at the same time, capitalizing on the fresh ideas of new talent. In short, we recognize that preserving our culture is mission critical to maintaining our competitive advantages and delivering shareholder value over time.

More than ever before, employees want and expect a workplace that aligns with their needs, wants and values. When employees feel supported and engaged, they in turn drive better business results and shareholder value. Therefore, we strive to deliver an employee experience that engages our teams and strengthens our organization.

Our employee experience program centers on gaining understanding of what drives performance and supports business priorities. We review external market data and conduct internal focus groups and surveys to drive deeper understanding across business groups and teams. This evolving program helps us understand why employees leave and, more importantly, what encourages them to stay and grow their careers with Travelers. Our CEO and senior leaders across the organization review the recommendations that are designed to improve our processes and ultimately shape and refine our culture.

To evaluate the employee experience and the success of our engagement efforts, and to inform the inclusion and leadership strategies we use to enhance employee engagement, we work with an independent employee insights platform to conduct an employee survey. Managers receive their teams’ results in aggregate form and are encouraged to share them with their teams and develop action plans accordingly.

Our 2023 survey results demonstrate that most employees feel positive about their overall experience at Travelers; our overall employee net promoter score (eNPS) increased over the previous year and scored above the 75% benchmark for companies using the same survey platform. Culture and overall team engagement were among our highest-scoring dimensions across the organization and were key drivers of employees’ satisfaction. We have opportunities that align with some of our existing priorities, including our focus on employee career development tools and resources, which we plan to expand in 2024.

Our average tenure and voluntary turnover rates demonstrate the power of our culture and the attachment our employees have to the organization. The average tenure for Travelers is 12 years, and it is over 20 years for the company’s approximately 700 most senior leaders. In a competitive labor market, our two-year average global voluntary turnover rate is consistent with our turnover rate prior to the pandemic. 

Tenure & Turnover

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We are confident that our employee experience and inclusion efforts will continue to have a strong impact – by shaping a workforce and workplace that drives exceptional business performance.

Our commitment to learning and career development is rooted in our belief that for us to be successful, we must provide our employees with the skills and capabilities to enable them to be successful.

Our leadership framework of “Leading Self, Leading Others and Leading the Business” outlines the skills and behaviors expected of our leaders. It supports the culture we’ve established at Travelers and serves as the underpinning for our leadership training, which includes several components:

• Coaching for Performance Excellence provides leaders with an understanding of the principles of good coaching, to help them in the day-to-day leadership of individuals on their teams.
• Leading World-Class Teams helps those who lead people or projects learn how to more effectively facilitate and engage teams.
• Leadership Principles is a cohort program for first-time leaders of people that provides practical tools and approaches that can immediately be applied to managing people at Travelers.

Travelers is committed to empowering employees to build the career they want at the company by deepening their expertise, moving across different roles and business groups, and seeking leadership opportunities. Employees are encouraged to have career development conversations with their managers, and resources and tools are provided to both managers and employees to help guide the discussion. Ongoing conversations and check-ins between employees and their managers can help employees identify skills they want to develop, goals they want to set for themselves or action steps they want to take. We continue to roll out new tools and resources that support employees’ career development; these include, for example, learning plans designed to help employees understand the breadth of jobs and professions across the company and identify development opportunities, as well as training designed to help employees expand their knowledge and learn new skills.

Our learning experience platform (LXP) is a centralized hub for all learning resources at the company, where content is both curated and aggregated on a regular basis for a personalized learning experience. This platform, which houses videos, articles and courses – both Travelers-created resources and content from third-party providers – provides an immersive and customized experience to meet our employees’ learning needs. Employees can use the platform to assess their skills, rate and comment on courses and lessons, and learn from subject matter experts across Travelers. During 2023, more than 88% of Travelers employees engaged with the platform and accessed more than one million learning resources, including articles, videos and courses. 

As part of our commitment to fostering a more inclusive workplace, employees are expected to complete the Conscious Inclusion Virtual Workshop. This program explores biases and their impact in the workplace and how we can change our behaviors to be more intentionally inclusive in our day-to-day interactions.

We encourage and support employee development through our Educational Assistance Program. Through the program, Travelers helps eligible employees – salaried employees who work at least 20 hours per week – pay for eligible education classes and professional designation and certification programs, including for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU), Associate in Risk Management (ARM) and Associate in Claims (AIC). In 2023, more than 500 employees received educational reimbursement. To reinforce the importance of underwriting as a core discipline, Travelers recognizes employees who successfully pass all eight CPCU exams and earn the professional designation by paying for eligible employees to attend their conferment ceremony, which is held each year for new CPCU graduates.

Additionally, Travelers offers various career mentorship and development programs for both entry-level and experienced professionals. For example, our multiyear Leadership Development Programs provide entry-level employees with an opportunity to progress through a steady career path in a specific discipline such as Actuarial, Business Insights & Analytics, Data Science, Finance, Human Resources and Operations. Participants complete assignments and rotations designed to help them build upon their technical, strategic thinking and leadership skills and strengthen their business acumen. These programs also include mentorship and networking opportunities, including with senior leaders, as well as speaker forums designed to keep participants up to date on industry trends and company initiatives.

In addition, our one- to two-year Development Programs – in Engineering (Technology), Investment Analyst, Underwriting and Product Management – provide the foundational knowledge and technical skills necessary for success at Travelers and include on-the-job training, classroom instruction, self-study materials and independent work in an assigned business area. These programs also provide mentorship opportunities and exposure to Travelers leaders. Participants in both our Leadership Development Programs and Development Programs are invited to compete in the company’s annual hackathon-style Innovation Jam. These programs have been a part of our talent strategy for many years. Many participants have gone on to hold senior roles at Travelers.

Leadership Development Programs

Development Programs

In addition, we monitor the development of talented employees to support them in developing the skills necessary to advance their careers and help them expand their relationships to facilitate their success.

Our performance management and succession strategy is designed to ensure the consistent alignment of the company, cultural and business unit goals that we believe help enable our company to create shareholder value over time. Through our annual performance management process, managers assist their direct reports with setting and monitoring goals, developing a plan to achieve those goals, evaluating progress against those goals and discussing opportunities for improvement throughout the year. Managers are expected to complete a mid-year and year-end progress update for each of their direct reports. This includes a meaningful conversation with each employee to discuss what went well and what can be improved.

We also conduct a comprehensive annual talent review, which includes succession planning, to identify and prepare talented employees for future leadership positions. Each line of business identifies talented employees and succession candidates for targeted development and advancement opportunities with individualized action plans. This talent review process culminates with the CEO and his direct reports meeting to review succession plans for key positions. In addition, the CEO meets with the Board’s Nominating and Governance Committee and the full Board of Directors to discuss succession-related matters at least once a year.

Travelers is focused on building a pipeline of talent to position the company for future success and is committed to hiring and developing a diverse and sustainable workforce across race, color, religion, gender, gender identity, age, national origin, disability, veteran status, marital status, genetic information and sexual orientation. Our recruiting efforts are designed to help us attract and retain top talent from a broad pool of candidates.

To maintain our competitive advantages, we increasingly need industry-agnostic talent. Historically, running an insurance company required actuaries, underwriters and finance professionals, among others; in addition to those types of professionals, we now also need roboticists, data scientists, artificial intelligence experts and behavioral scientists. This compels us to continually reimagine our talent acquisition strategies. In an effort to ensure Travelers’ long-term talent advantage, we recruit candidates with emerging skills from outside the insurance industry, in addition to candidates with traditional insurance skill sets and backgrounds. We deploy talent acquisition strategies, including advanced sourcing tools, employment branding advertising and social channels to help us create a pipeline of strong candidates.

We are focused on inspiring the next generation of insurance professionals and actively encourage students and graduates to explore career opportunities in the insurance industry and, in particular, at Travelers. To help us attract new talent to the industry, we have long-standing affiliations and partnerships with a number of organizations that share that mission, including the Spencer Educational Foundation and Gamma Iota Sigma. In addition, our signature career pipeline program, Travelers EDGE^® (Empowering Dreams for Graduation and Employment) is designed to increase the number of students who complete a bachelor’s degree and who are prepared for a career at Travelers or in our industry. We also have a strategic partnership with Girls Who Code to help us mentor and attract the next generation of women in technology.

To learn more about our efforts to bolster our diverse talent pipeline, see the Diversity & Inclusion section of this site.

Our compensation and benefits programs are designed to attract, motivate and retain high-performing employees and to help employees be healthy and productive in all aspects of their lives. Our long-standing pay-for-performance philosophy differentiates awards based on individual and company performance, regardless of gender, race or any other protected classification. In addition, our comprehensive, flexible benefit options are designed to meet the physical, mental and financial needs of employees and their families.

Compensation

Paying our employees equitably is the foundation of our performance-based culture. Our equitable pay statement outlines our approach. Our compensation processes and controls are designed with the goal of ensuring that we compensate our employees without influence from bias. With the assistance of independent, outside experts, we annually review our compensation practices to help ensure equitable pay across the company. Based in part on these measures, we believe that we pay our employees equitably, regardless of gender, race or any other protected classification.

Our minimum hourly wage in the United States is $18. As calculated and reported in our Proxy Statement, in 2023, excluding our Chairman and CEO, the median annual total compensation of all our employees was approximately $117,500. The median annual total compensation of our full-time U.S. employees who worked for Travelers for the entire year was approximately $128,000, putting us in the top quartile for employee pay in the S&P 500.

Travelers’ compensation mix includes base salary, performance-based cash awards and equity grants. The mix of these rewards varies depending on the employee’s role at the company.

• Many employees receive most of their total rewards in the form of base salary and medical and retirement benefits. 
• Variable compensation (annual bonus and equity) becomes a larger portion of the total rewards mix for employees at higher levels in the organization. Furthermore, the senior-most executives, who are responsible for the development and execution of our strategic and financial plans, have the largest portion of their compensation tied to performance-based incentives.

Health & Wellness

Because our employees are our most valuable asset, we are committed to helping them be healthy and productive in all aspects of their lives. We know that when employees and their families are well – physically, mentally and financially – they can be more fully engaged both personally and professionally. That’s why we offer comprehensive, flexible benefit options that, for our U.S. employees, include medical, dental, vision and prescription drug coverage; health savings; and flexible spending accounts.

In the United States, our medical plans cover more than 52,000 individuals, including employees, their children and their spouses/domestic partners. In 2023, we paid approximately $270 million in medical-related costs on behalf of our U.S. employees and retirees and their dependents. In our international operations, we provide medical coverage that supplements government-provided plans to our 2,500 employees and their families, subsidizing between 86% and 100% of total employee health benefit costs.

Employees and their eligible family members, including spouses, domestic partners and children, are generally eligible for coverage from the first day of employment. To keep rates affordable, Travelers subsidizes premiums on its health care plans through a cost-sharing model. We subsidize health benefits more heavily for less-compensated employees than for higher-paid employees, such as the company’s named executive officers. Accordingly, our higher-paid employees pay a significantly higher percentage of the cost of their health benefits as compared with our lower-paid employees.

We have a forward-thinking approach to our benefits plan design. We deliver new, innovative ways to support employee health and well-being, including financial incentives for some employees to choose high-quality, low-cost providers and safeguards for the use of opioids to help ensure that doctors, pharmacists and patients work closely together on treatment plans for pain management.

Our wellness program provides easy-to-use tools and resources that empower employees with the information and support they need to achieve their wellness goals. U.S. employees have access to the following:

• Professional in-person or digital counseling, life coaching and support for daily life needs through our employee assistance program. All services are free, confidential and available 24/7 to employees and their household family members.
• Caregiving Support from Wellthy, a program that helps employees navigate the challenges faced as caregivers for children, aging family members, or loved ones with special needs or who are chronically ill.
• MSK Direct, a free service for Travelers employees and their family members facing a cancer diagnosis, which provides guided access to expert cancer treatment and care at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center facilities.
• Our myWellness platform, a mobile-friendly, easy-to-use application that allows employees to track activity levels, improve sleep, create challenges with friends, take self-guided courses and much more.
• Wellness champions in more than 50 local offices help cultivate a culture of wellness at Travelers by leveraging employees’ interests and ideas to implement healthy initiatives at local offices.
• Free on-site wellness screenings for employees in our Hartford and St. Paul campuses.
• On-site counseling services for employees in our Hartford campus.

U.S. employees enrolled in a Travelers medical plan also have access to:

• Included Health, a free service for employees and dependents enrolled in a Travelers medical plan that matches members with top-ranked doctors, helps employees obtain second opinions from leading specialists and assists in navigating the health care system. It also connects LGBTQ+ and Black members to care teams that provide inclusive advocacy and care coordination to help ensure that community members feel safe and supported.
• A family building program from Maven, which provides holistic and personalized fertility and family-building support.
• A digital sleep improvement program from Sleepio.
• Our diabetes management program, which is a no-cost service that combines the latest technology with real-time support, facilitating the handling of diabetes for employees and their adult family members.
• Weight management programs with personalized coaching support, resources to help employees make positive changes and digital tools for users to track progress over time.
• Free tobacco cessation programs for employees and family members.
• Free seasonal flu shots for employees through on-site clinics and various retail pharmacies.
• Mobile mammography for eligible employees in certain locations.
• On-site chiropractors and physical therapists for employees in our Hartford campus.

Health & Wellness

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For more information on how we have protected the safety and health of our employees, see the Safety & Health section of this website.

Savings & Retirement

Our 401(k) Savings Plan provides employees with a vehicle to save for their retirement and the opportunity to receive a company match on those contributions. Employees can contribute from 1% to 75% (in whole percentage increments) of their eligible pay as pre-tax 401(k) or after-tax Roth 401(k) contributions, up to the maximum allowed under IRS limits. Travelers annually matches employee 401(k) contributions dollar for dollar, up to 5% of eligible pay. In 2023, the company matched contributions up to $7,500. Employees become 100% vested in company matching contributions after three years of service. Currently, 97% of our employees participate in the Travelers 401(k) Savings Plan. Outside of the United States, we provide defined contribution retirement plans for more than 2,500 employees, with an average company contribution rate of over 8%.

Travelers recognizes that the high cost of education and the obligation of repaying student loans prevent many people from saving for their retirement. The Travelers Paying It Forward Savings Program, our innovative retirement savings benefit, addresses this issue for employees facing student loan debt. When an eligible employee makes a payment toward their student loans, Travelers makes an annual contribution of that amount into that employee’s 401(k) Savings Plan account, dollar for dollar up to the first 5% of eligible pay, to a maximum of $7,500. For the year ending on December 31, 2023, Travelers provided $2 million to match student loan payments for more than 1,000 employees who had enrolled in this benefit. Since the program began in 2020, we’ve contributed more than $8.5 million to the financial security of these employees.

Travelers also assists employees with meeting their retirement needs through the Travelers Pension Plan, an active defined benefit pension plan. Travelers pays the full cost of the employee’s plan benefits; we do not require employees to contribute personally. The plan determines the benefits under a cash balance formula, which provides pay and interest credits to a hypothetical account maintained for the employee with an annual pension credit of approximately 4% of the employee’s pay. In 2023, approximately $600 million went to providing our employees with security in their retirement through pension payments and credits and 401(k) matching contributions.

We also support our employees’ financial success through financial planning services. Thousands of our employees have taken advantage of this offering. Among other things, we offer our U.S. employees:

• A financial wellness assessment that allows employees to get a financial wellness score and personalized checklist to help meet their financial goals.
• Online and text-based retirement planning services, including complimentary consultations and workshops to assist in savings and retirement planning.

Financial Security

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*Based on the median of the annual total compensation of full-time employees in the United States as reported in our 2024 Proxy Statement.

Work-Life

Additional benefits we offer U.S. employees at no cost include the following:

• Basic life insurance of one times their salary, up to $100,000 maximum.
• Short-term disability coverage.
• 20-30 days of annual paid time off, based on years of service, and the ability to purchase up to six additional days per year.
• Paid parental leave after the birth or adoption of a child.
• Adoption assistance and surrogacy reimbursement.
• Company-paid coverage for expenses incurred due to identity fraud.
• Childcare discounts.
• A corporate discount program.
• Paid time off for volunteering.

U.S. employees can enroll in the following additional benefit options:

• Optional life insurance for themselves, their spouses or their children.
• Long-term disability coverage.
• Coverage for a variety of legal services through the legal plan.
• Flexible spending accounts to fund eligible dependent care or health care expenses through pre-tax payroll deductions.