Insuring a Better FutureHelping OthersBeing Sustainable

2011 Highlights

Insuring a Better Future
  • Through our Information Technology organization’s Progressive Educational Partnership Program, in 2011 we helped students in these Ohio high schools: Euclid High School, Madison High School, Mayfield High School, Mentor High School, and Perry High School.
  • We worked with eight Ohio schools during 2011 on STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) initiatives to enhance student skills in these areas.
  • Progressive made a 2011 donation to Step Up for Students, a nonprofit organization focused on providing children K–12 from lower income homes who aren’t receiving what they need from the public school system an opportunity to attend a private school or one that better meets their needs.
  • In May, all employees were asked to complete annual mandatory Compliance & Ethics training, conducted by our third-party survey administrator, the Compliance & Ethics Leadership Council (CELC). This process helps us keep important Code of Conduct responsibilities fresh in our minds.
  • We published our 2011 Report on Loss Reserving Practices in the Investor Relations section of progressive.com. The report, released in May, explains how we use claims data, industry projections and other factors to determine how much money to set aside for paying claims.
  • In June, Gene Bennette from Superior Insurance Agency participated on behalf of Progressive at the Job Corp Safety Day Fair held in Cleveland. Almost 300 students attended the event, asking questions and collecting information about insurance. Job Corps is a public program targeting disadvantaged low income youth with a second chance opportunity to finish their high school education and earn a trade.
  • We offered a new service for customers and prospects - Severe Weather Text Alerts. Sign-up is at mobile.progressive.com/weatheralerts. It’s optimized for mobile phones and tablets. We were the first auto insurance company to offer this type of text alert service to give users timely texts when severe weather is near, including hail activity.
  • ColoradoBiz magazine selected us as one of the state’s best companies to work for based on a random survey asking employees how they felt about the work environment.
  • Our newest version of the Progressive iPhone app hit the iTunes store on July 18 with a new VIN-Scan feature that allows users to scan a VIN barcode and quickly compare the insurance costs for up to three different vehicles. A useful feature only available from Progressive.
  • The Progressive Latin American Networking Association (PLANetA) Employee Resource Group, in conjunction with National Hispanic Heritage Month, presented ¡Viva Progressive! This companywide educational celebration, which ran from Sept. 12 – Oct. 14, showcased the richness and diversity of Hispanic culture at Progressive through a wide variety of events, contests and activities.
  • The Cleveland Plain Dealer ranked us as one of the top workplaces in northeast Ohio based on employee surveys on topics ranging from leadership, compensation and training to our diverse and flexible workplace.
  • Throughout 2011, our sales force educated agents on social media tools and resources to help them gain attention in the digital marketplace. Many agents now have agency blogs and state-level Facebook pages for communicating with customers and to get the latest Progressive news and social media trends.
  • InformationWeek magazine named us to its annual list of the country’s most forward-thinking users of business technology, the InformationWeek 500. This is the 12th year we’ve received the honor.
  • J.D. Power ranked us 12th in its National Auto Insurance Study, in which car insurance customers rate satisfaction with their insurance companies. Customers rated us highest for: accessing policy information online, settling claims in fewer than 10 days, and error-free billing.
  • The Austin American-Statesman named us to its Top Workplaces in Austin list, based on anonymous employee surveys from area employers.
  • We ranked number 164 in the 2011 Fortune 500 list, which ranks America’s largest corporations based on total revenues. We’ve made the list every year since 1995.
  • The St. Petersburg Times ranked us as one of the “Top Workplaces 2011.” It’s a list of the best places to work in the Tampa Bay region based on employee responses to a survey on what makes an organization a great place to work.
  • We maintained a 100 percent 2011 Corporate Equality Index score from The Human Rights Campaign Foundation, the largest LGBT advocacy group in the U.S. The Cleveland chapter also gave us the Corporate Equality Award for our visible work, both internally and in our communities, to support and promote fair-minded values toward all people.
  • Keynote Competitive Research consistently ranks us as the number one insurance website. We’ve held this spot for every quarterly scorecard ranking published, except one, since 2000.

Helping Others
  • We had 984 donors at various blood drives across the company, which resulted in 889 successful donations.
  • Our Health Services providers completed 35,000 visits, helping 9,500 Progressive employees and dependents.
  • For the second year in a row, Military Times EDGE magazine named Progressive to its Best for Vets list, due in part to our efforts to recruit veterans and our 100 percent differential pay to active-duty reservists.
  • In March and April, food drives were held in multiple locations across the country. In Cleveland, donations of food and money supported the Cleveland Foodbank’s Harvest for Hunger campaign. We contributed more than $3,900 to the campaign.
  • The Historically Black Colleges and Universities organization (HBCU) selected us as one of their Top 50 Employers, recognizing companies that do an excellent job targeting students and alumni from U.S. Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
  • Every September employees in our Florida offices prepare and deliver gift baskets to local fire stations in memory of September 11th.
  • LATINA Style magazine, a leading publication for contemporary Hispanic women, named us to the LATINA Style 50, its annual list of the 50 best U.S. companies for Hispanic women. The list is based on available leadership programs, employee benefits, and Latina representation in senior positions.
  • Prevention.com selected Progressive as one of eight “Healthy Places for Women to Work.” The editors chose to highlight companies who encourage women to focus on their health while also striking a work/life balance.
  • CivilianJobs.com, a site that connects America’s military with civilian careers, named Progressive one of its 2011 Most Valuable Employer (MVE) for Military.
  • For the second year in a row, employees in our Colorado Springs location collected more than 1,000 used children’s books for Achieve Academy, a K-8 underprivileged school in North Denver.
  • Diversity MBA Magazine named us in its top 50 list of the Best Places for Diverse Managers to work.
  • Colleagues at our Miami, Fla., Service Center chose to give back by collecting food and toys during the month of December. Among the items donated to the Miami Children’s Hospital Cancer Center were a bike, sports equipment and Barbie dolls. The group also collected food items for Camillus House to feed homeless families in the area.
  • Members of our Real Estate Group provided furnishings, carpeting and office design assistance on behalf of Progressive for a new Hattie Larlham Constant Companion Center in Ohio.
  • Approximately 400 employees, friends and family members participated in the Diversity Walk, Rock and Run in Cleveland in May, with the Progressive team collecting more than $1,400 for the Diversity Center of Northeast Ohio.
  • We participated in and supported SMART Ride: a two day, 165 mile bike ride from Miami to Key West to raise awareness and funds to help people with HIV/AIDS in Florida.
  • Phoenix employees hosted their annual Barnyard Booster Bash with the Phoenix Children's Hospital. At the event, car seat checks are done and booster seats are given to families in need. Car seat safety checks also were done in some of our Pennsylvania claims service centers in conjunction with local police departments. Car seat safety checks were also hosted at our claims service centers in Glen Burnie, Maryland and Richmond, Virginia.
  • In Tampa, we participated in Bark in the Park and the Humane Society Telethon to promote our Pet Injury coverage and help our furry friends. Other pet-related events we participated in included the Big10K9 Race in Atlanta, Ga.; Cruisin’ for Critters in Las Cruces, N.M.; and an Operation Pet Kindness pet adoption event held at our Lewisville, Tex. claims service center.
  • Employees participated in Pride events in Miami Beach, Fla.; Atlanta; Cleveland; St. Petersburg, Fla.; and Colorado Springs and Denver, Colorado.
  • In Texas, Michigan, Oklahoma, Arizona and Colorado, we supported the National Auto Body Council’s Recycled Rides program by donating vehicles to needy families.
  • Burnsville, Minn. claims service center employees, local vendor partners and others joined forces to pack food for Food for Kidz. The group of more than 130 people packed enough food for more than 48,000 meals and collected over $6,100 for the charity.
  • In May, California employees participated in a landscaping beautification project to improve the landscape of the Women’s Care Cottage in North Hollywood. The Cottage has an 18-24 month program that provides young women who’ve been on probation or in court related foster care the opportunity to develop life skills to live independently.
  • More than 50 members of our Information Technology organization spent a sunny Saturday in May volunteering at Highbrook Lodge, a camp for the sight impaired. The team did projects throughout the 63-acre camp—from clearing hiking trails and planting flowers to painting cabin floors and resurfacing field warning tracks—to prepare everything for the summer camps.

Being Sustainable
  • By using our space more efficiently, offering flexible work arrangements and reducing our surplus space, we reduced our real estate footprint in 2011 by 837,608 square feet.
  • We installed equipment for a free-cooling system in one of our Cleveland locations in 2011. Free cooling is a process by which we use the low-temperature outdoor air to chill the water in our air conditioning systems. This change has already resulted in significant savings in energy use and costs.
  • We implemented electronic medical recordkeeping in Texas and Tampa with the hope to improve patient care and decrease our carbon footprint by producing less paper.
  • We installed variable frequency drives (VFD) at our Cleveland and Colorado Springs data centers. Using VFDs, we vary the speed of the fans that cool our IT equipment, reducing energy consumption through our air conditioning units by about 80 percent at both data centers.
  • In April, we kicked off a new Plant-a-Tree campaign for agency customers in Florida, Louisiana and Pennsylvania and for those in North Carolina and California who buy directly from us. We promised to have a tree planted for every Progressive agency auto customer in these states who enrolled in our Paperless and e-Signature options. Partnering with the National Arbor Day Foundation, we’re planting more than 80,000 trees based on this campaign.
  • We saved 5,757,199 kWh in electric energy use. Since 2007, our annual savings have resulted in more than a 25% reduction.
  • To further improve energy efficiency, we implemented critical zone reset technology in our Phoenix call center, where the system resets the supply-air-temperature set point based on temperature in the designated “critical” zone (the zone at greatest risk of overcooling and activating local reheat).
  • In October, we sent emails to our customers in New York, California, North Carolina and Oregon to let them know that we were planting 100,000 trees as an expression of gratitude for their business.
  • We incorporated energy efficient design methodology in the design of new facilities and service centers to be built in 2012 and 2013.
  • Corporate Sourcing continued their effort to replace various printing equipment with Konica Minolta multi-functional devices (MFDs). These MFD devices enable high speed printing (color or black and white), and copying from one machine. Both faxing and scanning options have been enabled in approved areas as well. The majority of machines have been set to default to black and white, double-sided printing to reduce costs related to toner and paper use. By late 2011, all regional and House Counsel offices across the country were connected for a savings of $3,651,406. Savings were generated by an overall reduction in hardware, toner and paper usage.
  • Employees across locations collected shoes, eyeglasses, batteries and cell phones to send to recycling organizations who repurpose them as part of our annual Environmental Awareness Week in April.
  • We continued to replace six-cylinder vehicles in our company fleet with four-cylinder vehicles to reduce our impact on the environment. (See related chart under Numbers.)