Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Progressive

We believe DEI is a human imperative.

For years, the business case for DEI has been clear. It’s been shown time and time again that having a diverse, equitable, and inclusive organization drives profit and productivity and leads to the creation of products and services that are more relevant and desirable in our competitive and multicultural marketplace. This is important, to be sure, but DEI is about more than just business results. It’s also about celebrating who we are as individuals—our backgrounds and cultures, personal identities, life experiences and perspectives—and about recognizing that our differences can be just as meaningful as our similarities. We believe in providing an equitable and inclusive environment because it’s the right thing to do for our people, not just because it’s a way to do good business.

We believe people should feel comfortable speaking up, asking questions, and disagreeing.

Our work environment flourishes because individuals can feel comfortable introducing new ideas and different points of view. A key to our success is that we debate important issues, speak up when it matters, and work together to find creative and worthwhile solutions. We encourage and teach the value of collaboration with differing perspectives, open discussions, and new ideas. Innovation is fueled by debate, and there can be no debate without differences. That’s the power of diversity.

We believe moving forward means being our best selves and rejecting hate and injustice.

Each individual’s experience in the world can affect the ways in which we interact with each other - whether at home, at work, or in our communities. Progressive works hard to create an environment where every person can be their best and authentic self and feel safe, valued, and respected. With so many acts of targeted hatred in our communities—driven by racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, religious intolerance, and so many other forms of bigotry—this work is more important than ever. We are committed to equity and fairness in our workplace and for every individual. We stand in solidarity with those who have faced destructive acts of prejudice and injustice, and we encourage our people to discuss these all-too-prevalent issues with our leadership team, one another, and our Employee Resource Groups.

We believe living fully means having the opportunity to get ahead.

It’s a given that a high level of employee engagement creates success, which is why we’re committed to a diverse workplace where there’s fair and equitable access to learning and career opportunities. Self-worth and job satisfaction come from feeling valued for the work we do and recognition for a job well done, and we consider career development to be a partnership between employer and employee. We strive to provide every Progressive person the opportunity and tools they need to reach their full potential—a win-win for our people and our business.

We believe everyone should have a voice.

Having a voice means that each individual has an opportunity, the ability, and the confidence to contribute – whether in our company or in society. We believe our nation is at its best when each person feels empowered to have a voice and can vote. We encourage and enable our people to exercise their right to cast a ballot, and we stand against efforts to prevent anyone from fully participating in our democracy.

It keeps us looking for what’s new and next to better serve our customers, help our communities, and work with each other. To maintain this level of energy and engagement, we strive for diversity in our teams, equity in our practices, and inclusion in our culture.

For sure, diversity, equity, and inclusion may feel like ambitious words, but when we listen to different and differing voices, act with kindness, and invest in relationships, we move forward and improve at what we do every day. This is who we are, and this is what we believe in as a company. It’s also nothing new to us. The principles of DEI are inseparable from our Core Values, and when our actions reflect these values, we’re embracing the very meaning of DEI at Progressive.

According to Tricia Griffith, President and CEO, "Our commitment to DEI helps us create a value-driven workplace that puts the employee first and fosters the kind of fair, caring, and respectful culture that breeds confidence and creativity and ensures a successful future for ourselves and Progressive."

Inclusive programs bring us together to learn more about each other.

A culture of inclusion helps to unlock the true potential of collaboration. It empowers us to speak up when we have new and different ideas, to question things that don’t feel right, and to hear others from a place of respect and open-mindedness.

We know this isn’t always easy. So, to encourage genuine inclusivity at all levels of our workforce, we host companywide Courageous Conversations, Dare to Disagree programs, and a DEI Speakers Bureau where presenters and facilitators lead work teams in discussions around biases, stereotypes, and the development of inclusive behaviors. Last year, we hosted nearly 260 Speakers Bureau and Courageous Conversations sessions across the country.

Employee Resource Groups create an environment where we feel welcome and valued.

Another popular and inclusive opportunity at Progressive is our Employee Resource Groups (ERGs). Progressive’s ERGs are open to all, and ERG engagement continues to outpace other major companies with an overall ERG membership of nearly half of our employees. While our Progressive population grew 25% over the past two years, overall membership of Progressive ERGs grew 30%. An impressive 44% of Progressive people and 80% of managers belong to at least one ERG.

According to Bill Clawson, Chief Human Resources Officer, “Our ERGs remind us to feel good about ourselves, speak up when we have something to say, and reach out for help when we need it. They also show us that we should, in turn, value, listen to, and help others. This is what it means to be part of something bigger, to feel like we belong, and to know that who we are and what we do matters in both big and small ways.”

Currently, we offer nine focused ERGs, each welcoming all employees.

• Asian American Network (AANET)
• Disabilities Awareness Network (DAWN)
• Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender, Plus (LGBT+)
• Military Network (MILNET)
• Network for Empowering Women (NEW)
• Parent Connection
• Progressive African American Network (PAAN)
• Progressive’s Latin American Networking Association (PLANetA)
• Young Professionals Network (YPNET)

ERGs at Progressive create space for networking, understanding differences, and sharing experiences. They host support groups and learning seminars, heritage events and holiday celebrations, and career development classes. Furthermore, our ERG members help us better understand the marketplace and our customers by participating in focus groups and serving on product development teams.

Our ERGs are also committed to our communities, and each year they support an organization they believe does good work helping the world around us. These included national organizations like The Arc, Together We Rise, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, CenterLink, and Family Promise.

Progressive employees explain ERGs in their own words...

To do so, we first ask ourselves: If these efforts are working effectively, what outcomes would we expect to see? Then, we then look at our actual outcomes over time to see how they measure up against our ambitious expectations. This approach should come as no surprise—insurance people are numbers people, after all.

As we evaluate our success, we look to four primary DEI objectives that we established several years ago:

1. We maintain a fair and inclusive work environment. We’re committed to creating an environment where our people feel welcomed, valued, and respected.
2. We reflect the customers we serve. To serve our customers, we must understand them. We seek to be diverse in our employee demographics, experiences, and perspectives.
3. Our leadership reflects the people they lead. We aspire to double the representation of people of color in senior leadership, from 10% to 20%, by the end of 2025.
4. We contribute to our communities. We’ll use Progressive’s resources to support meaningful change in pursuit of equality.

Our DEI efforts and commitment to ERGs play a big role in creating the kind of environment where people feel good about themselves and their contributions to Progressive. In addition to measuring ERG participation, we conduct an annual engagement and culture survey to evaluate overall employee engagement and satisfaction. Our 2023 engagement and culture survey results placed us in the top 5% of all companies using the survey, which is designed by a nationally known third party and administered to over 1,000 employers in the United States. We’re proud of these results, which speak to the tremendous strength of our culture.

And we must be doing something right to keep people here. As of December 2023, over 16,000 employees, 27% of our workforce, have more than ten years of tenure with Progressive. We believe our investments continue to pay dividends with our tenured workforce’s institutional knowledge of our product and stewardship of our culture.

With consecutive years of profitability and market success, Progressive is in an enviable position to hire the best and brightest people from across a spectrum of backgrounds and experiences. We have a hard-earned reputation among job seekers as a great place to make a career, and we’ve focused our recruiting efforts on reaching every corner of the diverse talent market as we strive to find the best people to fill open jobs. Our recruitment efforts and successes have naturally led to greater diversity in our candidate pools and throughout our workforce, which in turn helps us reflect and better serve our customers. In short, we have the right people working together in the right way, which is critical to driving our results and building an enduring business.

“Diversity” means far more to us than just race, ethnicity, and gender. It covers a whole host of visible and invisible traits, including work experience, communication style, physical ability, educational background, family status, and so much more. Some of these traits are, of course, more easily quantifiable than others. For that reason, we look at race, ethnicity, and gender—demographic traits tracked by both the U.S. Census and Progressive–to get a view of our overall workforce diversity.

In 2023, we hired nearly 15,000 new employees, representing about 1.8% of the total applicants for a job at Progressive. Of these new hires, 67% were women and 56% were people of color, which reflects the demographic diversity of our candidate pools. For us, this validates our efforts to attract, retain, and develop exceptional people with a wide range of skills, backgrounds, and experiences.

Each year, larger employers are required to submit an EEO-1 Report to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. While we don’t use this report to measure our success, we nevertheless make our current report publicly available.

We believe that engagement begins when our people rise into leadership roles and inspire others to lead, and a goal of our talent management and acquisition team is to remove any obstacles that could affect the representation of women and people of color in management. That’s why, in 2020, we stated an aspiration to increase the representation of people of color in senior leadership positions. We did this to challenge ourselves to reach far and wide to attract diverse, highly qualified applicant pools when recruiting opportunities arose and to invest broadly in developing our internal talent. We are proud to say that this deliberate effort to increase the diversity of our candidate pools has been successful in attracting and developing incredible talent throughout the organization.

But we don’t just strive for demographic representation. We expect our leaders to respect and value our people and appreciate new perspectives and ways of thinking, which leads to high-functioning teams capable of helping us reach our business goals. We address this through rigorous attention to leadership competencies, our DEI objectives, and inclusive leadership training.

With hiring a big priority at Progressive, we take it seriously when our talented job candidates say that opportunity for career growth is a top reason for choosing an employer. In 2023, we introduced a comprehensive intranet hub focused on career development that includes career exploration and planning guides, resources, and innovative new ways for Progressive people to collaborate with their managers to get ahead. Last year, we filled approximately 72% of our open positions above entry level by promoting from within, including over 2,200 managerial positions.

Progressive understands that engagement and retention depend not only on inclusive leadership and job satisfaction, but on our people knowing that there’s room to grow in their careers.

To increase job learning and opportunity, we created a fast-track career-advancement channel for sought-after technology and analytical jobs called the Progressive Boot Camp. Our IT Programmer Boot Camps and Analyst Boot Camps include rigorous in-class and on-the-job training to provide a base level of analytics knowledge and technical training. These programs are open to all Progressive people in select roles who are interested in a career in analytics or computer programming but don’t have the technical background required, and we’re deliberate in encouraging participation by women and people of color—two demographic groups that have been traditionally underrepresented in these jobs.

Another DEI-focused learning opportunity that has been successful for Progressive and our people is our Multicultural Leadership Development Program (MLDP), which we’ve been offering since 2014 and is open to every eligible employee at Progressive, across all demographics and business areas. Since the program’s inception, participation has nearly tripled and MLDP graduates are nearly twice as likely to advance in their careers versus their peers. We now have three separate MLDPs—one for current leaders seeking to move into senior leadership, and two designed for individual contributors at different levels of the organization who aspire to become leaders.

*In evaluating pay equity companywide, we use a regression model that considers the following components of compensation: annual salary, bonus (Gainshare) and stock awards. These are point-in-time measures (as of February 2024) that include all Progressive employees other than our CEO and C-level executives, whose compensation is approved by the Board’s Compensation Committee. For information on executive compensation, please refer to our Proxy Statement.