Health Journeys & Progressive Insurance: A Lasting Love Story
I’m trying to remember when we first began working with Progressive. It was a long time ago… had to be the early ‘90’s.
It was love at first sight.
Peter Lewis, Progressive’s bigger-than-life, hell-raising, out-of-the-box-thinking CEO, put the capital P in Progressive in more ways than one.
He was passionately dedicated to “complementary and alternative health” as it was called at the time, and determined to roll out a state-of-the-art, holistic, mind-body approach to the health and wellbeing of his employees. (The guy did nothing half-baked.)
He found a medical director (the awesome Irv Moore MD) who on-boarded a wellness director (the wise and wonderful Elizabeth Click PhD, RN) and they brought in all sorts of stress reduction programs, carved out a huge gym and workout area, built lactation rooms for nursing moms, gave expansive parental leave perks, provided fresh and healthy food… and mind you, this was back when nobody was doing this stuff.
The team distributed our guided imagery cassettes to employees for stress, sleep, pregnancy & childbirth, surgery, and a host of other issues. They introduced guided imagery to people who’d never think to use it or even know what it was. And those people told their friends, family and co-workers about it.
| Progressive still provides top-of-the-line, whole-person health and wellness to its 35,000 employees, but in today’s user-friendly, low cost, digital ways. |
Nowadays, under the savvy, inspired direction of Chief Medical Officer Tim Kowalski MD, we provide Progressive with its own branded streaming pages of guided imagery, meditation, yoga, breathwork, and simple, 5-minute relaxation exercises.
Employees can use these handy tools 24/7, at home or at work, on their mobile devices, at their desks, and even to start meetings in a calm, centered, focused way.
And they do. We’ve got the backend stats to prove it. We use those stats for instant, useable feedback that helps us fine-tune, tweak and switch out our audios, to keep up with what people actually use.
Dr. Tim is as fluent in sound business practices as he is in providing first-rate medical care. His team evaluates every service the department launches - in their onsite medical clinics, employee assistance programs, fitness centers and wellness programs. So those backend stats come in handy.
Online e-newsletters and health bulletins keep staff engaged with their wellness practices, and company incentives and encouragement keep them coming. It’s altogether… well… progressive.
So hats off to the company we’ve steadfastly loved for over 3 decades! The great tradition continues. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company still provides top-of-the-line, whole-person health and wellness to its 35,000 employees, but in today’s user-friendly, low cost, digital ways.
Bravo and Happy New Year!
All best,
BR
