Citizen Travelers is a nonpartisan initiative that provides our more than 30,000 employees with the resources and support they need to constructively engage as informed citizens and translate their individual passions into activities that build and strengthen their communities.
As a 170-year-old company, Travelers’ story is only possible because freedom, the rule of law and economic opportunity are foundational to our way of life. At Travelers, we are conscious of our role in preserving our democratic tradition, and our responsibility to pass it on to future generations. While Travelers has long been a good corporate citizen, through this initiative we are finding new ways to be a corporation of good citizens.
An informed, invested and involved citizenry makes for strong communities, a strong economy, a strong workforce and a strong country. It drives confidence in the market, lays the foundation for businesses to grow, and enables people from all backgrounds to invest in their own lives and livelihoods. Yet many Americans lack a basic understanding of America’s system of government. According to a 2022 survey, just half of Americans can name all three branches of the federal government. When people are less civically engaged, we see increased polarization, greater disenfranchisement, and a breakdown in healthy discourse.
Informed civic engagement is a positive way to address these concerns. At its core, Citizen Travelers brings Americans together for critical conversations and unites us around shared goals. This kind of engagement is essential to overcome polarization and solve the challenges facing our nation.
Citizen Travelers has three key objectives: encourage lifelong civic learning; build a civically engaged community; and inspire civic leadership.
Rather than using a prescriptive, top-down approach, we encourage and empower employees to get involved in the civic matters that are most meaningful to them. Our approach leads to a mutually rewarding outcome for our employees, who get to work on rewarding projects of personal importance, and Travelers, which benefits from an engaged and loyal workforce. It makes sense that employees who believe their purpose is aligned to their organizations are more productive, more engaged, happier, and healthier.
Encourage lifelong civic learning. Democracy depends on informed and engaged citizens. That is why we connect our employees with leading nonpartisan organizations that are experts in civic education. Through these partnerships, we provide information on everything from U.S. history to the basic workings of government to how to become more involved in civic life. These tools and resources give our employees the information they need to get involved and make an impact.
Build a civically engaged community. Every day, Travelers employees are using their skills, experience and passion to help their communities – as volunteers, as advisors and even as elected officials. We provide all the support we can because we believe civic engagement fosters a healthy democracy and a healthy economy. Citizen Travelers provides new ways for employees to connect, share experiences as civic leaders and motivate others. When our employees see their colleagues doing extraordinary things, they’re inspired to get involved – often in ways they hadn’t considered before.
As just one example, our Spotlight video series focuses on the dedication of Travelers employees to improve their communities – from serving on their town council or board of education to volunteering as election officials – and illustrates the journeys they have taken to become civically engaged. These videos demonstrate how our employees utilize talents they developed at Travelers to help their community, and in turn gain leadership and other skills that aid their career development. Travelers showcases the Spotlight videos during internal and external forums, such as all-employee town halls, shareholder meetings, and gatherings with agent and broker partners.
Inspire civic leadership. Civic leadership starts when someone takes the first step that leads to a healthy democracy and a healthy economy: getting involved. We are happy to share our model for a civic engagement program with other organizations through conferences, forums and webinars. We have also developed a playbook other businesses can follow to build similar programs of their own. By sharing Citizen Travelers ideas and initiatives, we are promoting broader adoption of active citizenship across businesses of all types and sizes. Civic engagement is a win for business, and it’s essential for our country’s future.
Although Citizen Travelers has only been around for around three years, we have quickly grown a robust program. Thousands of Travelers employees actively participate in the Citizen Travelers community, whether by using internal tools to network, attending events, serving as Citizen Travelers ambassadors in our field offices, or creating their own means of doing civic good, and we are continuing to grow.
Travelers employees have dedicated hundreds of hours to civic volunteering in their communities as election officials, on local committees or commissions, as National Civics Bee essay judges and more. United by a sense of civic duty and a desire to engage, people across the company are working to better our communities and strengthen our democracy. In the process, they’re finding that by working side-by-side with their fellow citizens, political divisions shrink and mutual understanding grows.
While the Citizen Travelers community continues to grow in numbers, we find the most value in our qualitative impact. Our mission is felt at the individual and local level. The positive feedback we’ve received about this initiative tells us that people are learning more, getting involved and bridging the divides within our country. Our employees have a passion for making a positive impact and developing effective solutions to the issues our communities face. All they need is an opportunity, and Citizen Travelers is working to open those doors all across America.
View the full Spotlight video series, access the Citizen Travelers Playbook and learn more about Citizen Travelers.
