Speaker 1:
From the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, welcome Inside the ICE House. Our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange is your go-to for the latest on markets, leadership, vision, and business. For over 230 years, the NYSE has been the beating heart of global growth. Each week, we bring you inspiring stories of innovators, job creators, and the movers and shakers of capitalism here at the NYSE and ICE's exchanges around the world. Now let's go inside the ICE House. Here's your host, Lance Glinn.
Lance Glinn:
Corporate Policy Institutes play a vital role in shaping informed dialogue around key public policy issues. By leveraging their industry experience, the institutes provide data-driven insights that help policymakers, business leaders and the public better understand complex challenges. They serve as platforms for thought leadership, convening experts across sectors to drive collaborative solutions. Through research, education, and advocacy, corporate policy institutes elevate the voice of the private sector in meaningful constructive ways. Travelers, that's NYC trader symbol TRV, established the Travelers Institute to actively engage in public policy dialogue on issues impacting the property and casualty insurance sector and the broader financial services industry. Under the leadership of today's guest, Travelers Institute President Joan Woodward, the institute leverages the expertise of industry leaders to deliver insights, analysis, policy recommendations, and help raise awareness of key issues. Joan, thanks so much for joining us inside the Ice House.
Joan Woodward:
Well, it's my pleasure to be here. Thank you for hosting me.
Lance Glinn:
So on April 7th, you and the Travelers Institute had the honor of ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange. I know not your first time, but it marked the Institute's 15th anniversary and celebrated its many accomplishments, which we'll explore throughout our conversation. But as you reflect Joan, on the past 15 years, how has the Travelers Institute just influenced and helped shape the national conversation around really key public policy issues?
Joan Woodward:
Yeah, our CEO, Alan Schnitzer called me one day. I was sitting at Goldman Sachs running the Global Markets Institute and happily so, and he asked us to consider creating an institute for Travelers. And here's his kind of thought, I think if I could summarize, he said, "Joan, we insure the world or GDP." Anything you can touch and feel, is insurable, we insure it. And so we're a GDP driven company and sees across all industries. So we do every industry out there in the business world and the services industry as well, of course, we insure. And so he wanted to explore a lot of challenges in society, whether it be the accessibility and the affordability of insurance and coastal areas where there's hurricanes and wildfire areas. And so kind of putting out thought leadership ideas to help regulators and policymakers make informed decisions about our industry.
Again, it's an industry that's, I don't want to say invisible. Obviously all business owners have insurance. All personal individuals have insurance on their cars, their homes, their valuables, but really to talk about the pressing challenges facing society at large. So for example, distracted driving. And we see this in our claim data daily, unfortunately, about the dangers of distracted driving. And so we'll go through a number of our projects and programs, but it really is a thought leadership, not just a think tank, but it's a do tank. We've done over a thousand events out in the country over the last 15 years attracting almost a million people to either listen to a webinar or engage with us in person. And so we're really pleased and happy with the last 15, and we're looking forward to the next 15.
Lance Glinn:
And so Travelers launched the Travelers Institute in May of 2009, and since day one, you've been at the helm offering insights and thought leadership to professionals and broader business audiences, as you obviously just spoke to. Naturally, the conversations taking place in 2009 might be a little bit different than the conversations taking place here in 2025. How has the institute evolved over the past 15 years as public policy issues have shifted and you've talked about one thing, but then we've had this new thing like AI pop up in the last few years, which create all new conversations that you may have not foreseen 15 years ago?
Joan Woodward:
Oh, certainly. It's almost daily. Something new is happening in the world and we have to pivot to talk about things that we're seeing. Again, our business folks, 30,000 experts in insurance, everything crosses our desks because it's all insurable. And so we have experts in all of these areas. Construction, energy, healthcare, technology, you name it. We have an expert who's underwriting and ensuring that risk for that business. And so we have certainly taken on a number of topics over the years that our business leaders come to me and say, "Joan, this is a problem and this is a problem that we are seeing in this industry. Let's dig deep into it. Let's help policymakers, regulators figure out how to regulate this risk," if you will.
And so because we're regulated by the states, there's 50 state regulatory bodies and they all act differently. And so we are here as a resource, a nonpartisan, bipartisan, research-based organization that does try to put out what we're seeing in these industries in a white paper, hosting a webinar, talking about issues to help our customers, our clients, our agents, our brokers, again, policymakers to make better decisions about the outcomes of what these challenges are. As you say, technology certainly is not the same as it was in 2009. Not a lot of things are the same as they were coming out of that financial crisis back then.
Lance Glinn:
And what is that challenge like? Because you mentioned you work with 50 different state bodies, New York, New Jersey, right? The tri-state area, including Connecticut is a lot different than the Midwest or the Southwest or the Southeast, the West Coast. So what is that challenge like of managing these 50 different bodies so that you obviously stay up to regulation, stay up to code with a state like New Jersey in a completely different state, like a Missouri?
Joan Woodward:
Right. And each state has its own challenges, right? There's rivers in the river basin, states that overflow. We have to talk about flood insurance, the federal flood program, which is something we have to work with, obviously. There's wildfires as we saw devastatingly both in Canada in recent years and then most recently in Los Angeles. Sadly, my daughter lives there. And I will tell you, being evacuated and trying to fill your car with every single thing that matters to you in your house because your house might not be there in a few days. And so we are there when people are at their lowest and at their lowest point in time or your house burned down, we are there for them on day one. And so those personal stories of helping those individuals in these individual states that have unique challenges. I mean, look at the tornado and hail you see in the Midwest and in the South or the hurricane lane coming through New Orleans or in Florida.
And so the regulatory bodies are uniquely qualified to help us, the insurance industry, set those prices in a way that's commensurate with making sure that they're accessible and they're affordable in these states. And so it's more important even now to talk about the accessibility and affordability. Look, social inflation is another huge problem. These nuclear verdicts that we're seeing in our industry popped up. They were not there many decades ago. And so navigating through the litigation and legal reform in these states separately, Florida has taken some pretty good actions in recent years. Georgia is on the path to doing some really important things for consumers to lower those costs. And so we're in that game.
Lance Glinn:
In addition to celebrating the Institute's 15th anniversary, ringing the opening bell on April 7th, you also rang it to mark the launch of the Travelers Institute Forces at Work Initiative. Before we dive just into the details, and what is included within that initiative, can you just share the overall purpose behind it and what goals you hope to achieve through Forces at Work?
Joan Woodward:
And we are so pleased to be able to really dig into this issue of workforce trends and workforce risks. And so we published a paper on this. We have lots of educational resources. We're focused on five key areas. One is the labor market. Look, demographic shifts. The baby boom generation's retiring, 10,000 of us every day retire, the birth rate is down. And so the labor shortages that we're seeing in this macroeconomic environment really does influence the workforce, the employee as well as the employer. That's number one, labor market. And number two is leadership and management. We really try to highlight the stories and strategies for effective leadership in this time of rapid change and uncertainty, if you will. Third is talent development and getting your skillset right for your labor force, attracting, retaining, and developing that talent. Talent is your most important asset in any company. So that's number three.
Number four is employee wellbeing, promoting mental wellness, stress management, other aspects of holistic employee care. And when you show you care about your employees, they really are engaged, highly engaged and more productive. And then lastly, risk management and insurance offering those risk management strategies, obviously through our workers' compensation program. We have about 500 nurses on staff at Travelers. So when someone has a worker's compensation claim, it's not just about the physical wellbeing of that person, but the mental wellbeing. Think about if you go out on a worker's comp claim, you're sitting at home alone and want to be back in the game, but you can't physically, your mental health is really important to get right for your recovery.
Lance Glinn:
Absolutely. No, absolutely. Those are great initiatives and key trends to focus on. And one of them you mentioned, mental wellbeing. I want to read some statistics to you really striking statistics. 83% of US workers report daily work-related stress. 23% of US adults experience symptoms consistent with a diagnosable mental disorder. These numbers, I think, Joan, they underscale the mental health crisis that is going on, I think in the workplace, but also just in the broader country. So in your view, just what do you think is really driving these, again, really staggering trends and what factors have made mental health such a pressing issue for employers in recent years?
Joan Woodward:
Yeah, we are certainly in a mental health crisis in America, the National Institutes of Health reports that one of five adults is experiencing mental illness today. So it's 20% of our population. And unfortunately, there's a stigma still associated with a mental health condition, which is one of the main reasons why we took this on head on to try to bring more light and awareness to this because there's really a strong connection towards mental wellbeing and physical health. We want to reduce that mental health stigma and promote employee wellbeing. So it's just not a topic that we can avoid at work.
Your manager has more influence on your mental health than your primary care physician that you may see once a year for your physical checkup once a year. So wellbeing can be taught to managers to identify someone who might be struggling. So someone who might be struggling, who's coming to work late, chronically late when they were always a punctual employee. Maybe they don't care about what they look like anymore when they're coming to work. Maybe they're just depressed and you could see it in their eyes, they're so sad inside. And so there's a number of things you could do as a manager to detect that and try to help that person without invading their privacy. So we're promoting that in the workplace.
Lance Glinn:
And my question, I guess to you is with this initiative, and we'll continue to talk more about it as the conversation goes on, but with something like mental health wellbeing rate, how do you judge the overall success of an initiative like this? Is it solely based on the numbers behind it, taking that one in five to making it one in 10 or one in 15, or is there an intangible? Is there a non-quantifiable measure that could determine if forces at work or at least Travelers' focus on this key component is success?
Joan Woodward:
Yeah, we're not going to have an Excel spreadsheet that tells us we've been successful. It's not something that you can quantify or put in a box. It's raising awareness, just for example, like distracted driving. The more we talk about people driving distracted, people are actively shopping online while they're driving. So we know raising awareness, for example, around smoking and the dangers of smoking, raising awareness around not wearing your seatbelt. So there's been a number of public awareness campaigns that have worked, or at least are working or getting better.
So most people wouldn't get in a car today and drive away without putting on their seatbelt. That wasn't the case. In the 1970s, I recall sitting in the back of a very large, I think it was, I don't know, some knockoff Cadillac. It was certainly not a Cadillac, but it was a huge box and it was okay not to wear your seatbelt, and it was okay to smoke indoors and it's okay to smoke in restaurants, and we've changed that. So the stigma of mental health in the workplace or generally in society, raising awareness is step number one. I don't care that I don't have a PNL or in a worksheet around this. I don't need one. I know that we're making a difference for employees and employers.
Lance Glinn:
So you also mentioned the Forces at Work Initiative explores labor market trends and the various factors obviously shaping today's workforce. And there are a ton of them, right? Whether it be AI automation, just the overall role of technology in the workforce, changing workplace and changing employee desires, the desires and the wants and needs of employees are a lot different now than even they were back in 2009 when the Travelers Institute first began. How you noticed those trends changing obviously throughout these last few years. And just in the more short term, let's say the last five years really since the COVID pandemic, how have you noticed the labor force and the labor market changing to better shift towards these new employee wants, these new employee needs, and obviously the desires that the overall workforce has today?
Joan Woodward:
Yeah. After we rang the opening bell, by the way, we hosted a symposium on stage talking about all these issues, and we hosted a panel, two panels. The first panel was on mental health, and we had the former US Surgeon General Jerome Adams talking about that as well as workers' compensation with some of our experts. But the second panel really focused on workforce and workforce trends. And we had the former CEO of Deloitte, Dan Helfrich, along with our Chief Technology Officer, Mojgan Lefebvre, and they spoke a lot about technology and workforce and the intersection of those two in the current environment. Obviously coming out of the pandemic, we had a lot of disruption in the labor market, a lot of quits, a lot of people quit their job. My CEO calls it the great reshuffle. People rethought their lives, and if they didn't like the job they were in during COVID and lost their job, they sought a different category of jobs.
And so we saw a lot of people changing, pivoting in their own careers, and employers were kind of shocked, I think, a little bit. And so some of the terrific HR strategies that we employ at Travelers, and we share that with our industry counterparts and in financial services, is having an engaged workforce. Someone who wants to come to work, is excited to come to work every single day and loves their job. That's what you want. But you have people, according to Gallup Polling, there's this something called an engagement survey. They come to work and they're not just disengaged employees, they're actively working against you. So you don't want a disengaged employee or somebody who's actively working against where the momentum of the company is going. And so identifying those individuals, obviously attracting the right talent, going into those, not just colleges, but frankly the trade, the community colleges, retraining people, re-skilling them to better work with technology.
I'm the older generation, so I'm not as tech-savvy as you are, I'm sure. But I was the one rolling around in the back seat without my seatbelt, [inaudible 00:17:23]. So technology has really propelled us, and I'm going to ask all of your audiences to go back and watch the webinar we hosted at the stock exchange that day on April 7th, because Mojgan really spoke about how technology cannot not only be a catalyst for propelling companies forward and with a cutting edge technology, but people and training our people to use an employee technology. We have a proprietary AI app. Every one of our employees are empowered to use our proprietary AI platform. And it's remarkable. It is remarkable, and it's a game changer for sure. So we are doubling down on technology as a solution, but also we want to make sure our employees come to work happy, our engaged, and are moving in the same direction as the rest of us.
Lance Glinn:
And so you actually beat me to the punch with the symposium, like you said here at the New York Stock Exchange after the opening bell, you did have the Forces at Work, excuse me, symposium. You mentioned obviously Keynote Speaker was the 20th, US Surgeon General Jerome Adams, as well as obviously you were the host, a ton of other speakers included too. And like you said, encourage our audience to go back and watch it. When you are able to get such big names and such insightful opinions and thoughts in one room together to discuss these pressing issues, what could that do, or what kind of impact do those types of events make to really help move the needle and to really help an initiative like Forces at Work get through to a greater audience and provide greater awareness to the key components it's really focused on?
Joan Woodward:
Yeah, I mean, it's not just enough to be a thought leader in our industry on these topics that we identify is really important to talk about, but to try to have actionable outcomes in terms of, again, I'm not going to have a spreadsheet on this, in terms of what people are learning through our webinar series. We have about six or 7,000 people that join us almost every Wednesday to learn something new and learn something that they can implement in their businesses on that day or the day after.
And so we try to bring forward ideas, topics, speakers. Look, I had two secretaries of defense on, one Republican, one Democrat. One was Mark Esper during the Trump administration. One was Chuck Hagel in the Obama administration talking about the effects of the Mideast crisis and the war in Ukraine and how that affects your business. And so we don't just talk about insurance on our webinar series, we talk about lots of different macroeconomic trends, geopolitical trends that are out there and facing our business owners to bring them content that is useful. We want useful content that we can implement the next day. We don't want to just be lectured in a college kind of setting. And so that's what we're hoping to achieve with our webinar series.
Lance Glinn:
And you mentioned the push from leaders at Travelers. How much does that help you to know that you have the backing and the ability to take this next step or try this new webinar series or this new podcast? I'm sure that provides you with a lot of excitement as well as a lot of creativity to say, "Hey, I know that I have the C-suite on my side. Let's try this new thing. I know I'll have their support."
Joan Woodward:
Yeah, I have terrific partners at Travelers, and again, our CEO, Alan Schnitzer is quite a thought leader, but also our business folks, business insurance, personal lines, whether it's bond and specialty or surety business, they not only have my back, they have the momentum at my back and access to their experts for all of what we do is critical. So I don't know this myself. I'm not an insurance expert, but I have 30,000 of them that contribute to our thought leadership, and I'm just so grateful to be the one that gets the title, but it's not me. It is a huge team effort by our senior leadership who's invested in this institute in a way that I'm just thrilled that we're doing this. I think we're moving the needle on a number of topics for society.
Lance Glinn:
And with all of these different opportunities to get the message out. Right? We're talking about the Forces of Work initiative. We're talking about Wednesdays with Woodward, the webinar series, which you mentioned. We're talking about the Risk and Resilience podcast, Travelers Institute's podcast. When you have so many opportunities to get the message across, how do all these different platforms really help you connect with as big and as wide of an audience as you can to make sure that, "Sure, you're not watching the webinar series? Well, you can listen to Risk and Resilience. You're not listening to risk and Resilience? Well, you can focus on Forces at Work." So many opportunities to get the message across. How do you sort of blend them all together to reach the greatest audience possible?
Joan Woodward:
Yeah, I mean, I don't know what the saying is, but meet your customers where they are, not where you want them to be at, but where they actually are. So we did stand up a podcast so people can listen to us when they're skiing, cutting the grass, gardening, whatever. You obviously know of a successful podcast when you see one, because yours is hugely successful in the financial markets community and resources like ours. Again, we're just so grateful to be doing this for our listening audience. And I think having the content, we actually still print a white paper. We've print it out for people who actually want to touch it and feel it-
Lance Glinn:
You're meeting your audience where they are.
Joan Woodward:
That's right. That's right. So we're thrilled to be able to have these different channels, and LinkedIn has been a huge friend of ours. We've used LinkedIn a lot. My personal LinkedIn, which is Joan Kois Woodward, K-O-I-S, in the middle there, an old Polish name. I grew up in southwestern Pennsylvania. And so you got to put in the maiden name for that.
Lance Glinn:
So I do want to just look at these large corporate policy institutions like yourself with a bigger picture real quick. Just how do you see the roles of these divisions, these institutes just sort of evolving within these larger companies in the years ahead? You mentioned obviously being at Goldman Sachs, you get the call from Alan Schnitzer, or you get the call from Traveler saying, "We want to start one. We want to start the Travelers Institute." How do you just see the role and the impact of them growing in the next five, 10, 15 years?
Joan Woodward:
Yeah, actually, I'm thrilled to say that I was glad to be a part of the first one that was done in Corporate America in a big way, which is the Global Markets Institute and the CEO at the time, Hank Paulson tapped me to be the founding executive director, and we didn't know exactly what we were going to do, but we knew there was a need out there, a need for information. Again, industry information, not proprietary stuff, but talking about what that industry does for society and how regulators and policymakers who aren't experts in Wall Street or anything, but they're legislating and regulating these industries. So I know that the JP Morgan has an institute now, McKinsey has an institute. I think Exxon Mobile was looking at one, I don't know if they stood one up recently, but I think it's important, to... Now, I'm completely separate from our lobbyists, and we have terrific lobbyists in all 50 states in Washington DC, and they're lobbying hard on bills and laws, playing offense or playing defense as the case may be, but I'm not that, right?
The institute is here to be an educational resource to talk about these problems, these issues we see through our business lens. I'll give you another example of one of our platforms, which is cybersecurity. And we stood this up about eight years ago when cyber insurance came on the scene. And so talking with the Department of Homeland Security, who has now joined us at over 60 cybersecurity awareness events that we did out in the country. So we always have someone from the DHS or CISA, Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency, the FBI. We've had the CIA talk about what they see in cyber, what's going on on the dark web for business owners to be aware. And then of course, we have a cyber insurance product to talk about as well, and being that solution for a lot of business owners. So the institutes I've seen in Corporate America, I'm just welcoming. I'm hoping a number of other companies start them.
Lance Glinn:
So we talked a little bit earlier in our conversation about the role of AI and the role of automation in the workplace and how it's bringing a lot of excitement, obviously with all of its different capabilities. And I think so many of those capabilities have yet to be uncovered for what AI really could do for the workforce or for any given employee for what they do. But obviously it also brings with it a lot of caution. It brings a lot of nervousness, a lot of worry to what it could mean to the workforce overall. I do want to sort of go back to that discussion that we were having before. I'm curious your thoughts on it. How do you believe employers can responsibly integrate AI technology, automation, whatever it may be, while minimizing those worries, those cautions, those reservations that employees may have of, "Hey, is AI taking my job?" Or, "Hey, is AI going to change drastically what I do or what I've done for the last 15, 20, 25 years?"
Joan Woodward:
Yep. First, let me start out by saying Travelers developed its own, and early on we developed our own ethical guidelines around the use of AI in our business. And so that's number one is to have a guiding light as to where it is okay or not okay to use AI. And understanding those guidelines for each employee is really critically important. But there is a concern. I mean, look, people don't know in the next three to five years if AI eventually will shrink the workforce in their division, in their department, in their company. And so we'll have to keep an eye on it because as you say, there's a P&L to be had. We want shareholder value to be created. And so we've been using, first of all, we've been using AI for a very long time. We didn't call it AI, right? 10 years ago, but we've used smart computing for many years and used it very effectively. And so this is leapfrogging us to the next decade or so with this new version of artificial intelligence.
Lance Glinn:
And you say, "We don't know." And I think that's the biggest worry. I guess I could say biggest worry as well as the biggest excitement with AI is we don't really know what the future holds because we're seeing new models come up every day. We're seeing these new technologies arrive every day. So for you as the leader, president of the Travelers Institute, how do you envision the institute evolving with these changing technologies, and how do you envision the institute addressing and incorporating them in the years to come?
Joan Woodward:
Yeah, we certainly are embracing it at the institute. And again, there might be different pathways or different venues or different outcomes for our content to push out in different ways. So there could be kind of a technical aspect of getting our research and getting our content pushed out to society more broadly or differently and different pathways. But also, again, those 30,000 insurance professionals who I rely on for their expertise and deep expertise and understanding what it could do to their businesses, whether it's a surety bond for a municipality and rebuilding bridges, we saw after many hurricanes we're right in there working with the legislatures and getting a surety bond to put up a new bridge where it is completely decimated in a hurricane zone or using AI and looking at the fire zones and early predicting, making sure people remove trees hanging over their house.
So we will proactively go in and say to an insured, "Look, we think there's a fire risk here with your house. Please remove these three trees overhanging your roof." And so there's a lot to be done proactively using AI technology and geospatial technology, which of course we use and have been using for decades. So the applications we think are going to be very, very helpful in our businesses, and we certainly intend to use them at the institute as appropriate with the guardrails that we set up with our ethical guidelines. So we're excited. We're very excited. I'm one of those highly engaged employees that comes to work and just loves it every single day.
Lance Glinn:
So Joan, we began our conversation reflecting on the 15 years of the Travelers Institute. Talked a little bit about how the topics of conversation in 2009 are a lot different than the topics of conversation in 2025. Some same, but still a big difference. As you've had this journey along the way, what key lessons have you picked up that you think will help shape the Institute's future and help enhance its impact and its influence in the next five, 10, 15 years?
Joan Woodward:
Yeah, first of all, our people. I am just amazed every single day how engaged and highly attentive our people are. Claim professionals, working with people at their lowest moments. They may have just lost their house, they may have had a flood and they may have not understood their insurance policy. So we have terrific caregiving people in our claim department that work with individuals and businesses every day. I also think that a trend in the last 15 years that has grown, that's a challenge for our industry. So that's the good news. The good news is we're here to help. And we do that really in a way that every single one of our individuals who work with a client, the customer or the insured, does it in a way with great care and always paying what we owe on time and early.
But I think there's challenges and the challenges we see on the horizon is again, the litigation environment and educating consumers that hiring a lawyer all the time, and these third party litigation financing groups from around the world are financing litigation that the individual claimant probably has no idea that they're part of putting money into the system. And at the end of the day, that claimant doesn't end up getting a lot of that money. It goes to the lawyers, and we're very, very hopeful that in some of the states that have some policies that really are anti-consumer, we could try to turn that around. Like again, Florida has done, we've had some success in Georgia working to show consumers that the cost of litigation financing is not helping the actual individual person who's been had a tragedy in their life.
So we have some challenges on the way ahead. There's some opportunities, as I said, with AI and other things, but we're going to be right there meeting people at the moment where they want us to be met and talking about issues that are important and we're expert in the insurance industry and getting them out to the public. So raising awareness again is what I'm all about.
Lance Glinn:
Joan, as we begin to wrap up our conversation, we talked earlier about the mental health crisis, not only in the workforce, but throughout the entire country. How should managers better help those they work with attack this mental health crisis and be there for their employees, those specifically that are in need?
Joan Woodward:
So if you're a manager of people, maybe you're a senior leader, there's five things that we recommend. One is active listening. Practice active listening skills to create a safe space for employees to express their concerns. So do have those one-on-one meetings with your staff. They can only be 15 minutes just to touch base, but know your staff, know the people that you work for, know what challenges they may be facing in their personal life, but also number two, recognize those signs of distress. So train your managers to recognize common signs of mental health struggles, such as changes in mood, productivity, maybe showing up on time, as I said, or their behavior. Number four, again, those regular check-ins. Schedule one-on-one meetings to discuss their goals, their overall well-being, know what's going on at home in their lives with their children, with their maybe elderly grandparents, with their own health without trying to be looking at their privacy.
Some people are less talkative about their personal life at work, but as a manager, it's your responsibility to understand what that person who works for you might be going through personally. Lead by example. Demonstrate healthy work habits. So take your breaks, take your vacations, respect boundaries. I know it's all 24-7 now. We all have laptops at home. We're all emailing on the weekends. But you could tell your team, "I may email you something on a Saturday or a Sunday. Look at that email on a weekend if you want, but you don't need to get back to me until Monday morning." But set the boundaries so your employees know they're not always have to be focused on their cell phones or on their laptops.
Lastly, open communication. This is really important. It's okay to ask your team, "Are you okay? Will you be okay?" We want to create a supportive environment, and it's okay not to be okay, but once you identify an individual who might be struggling, make sure to get them the right resources quickly so they could try to move along in their journey to a better mental well-being place for them.
Lance Glinn:
Well, Joan, I think those are all great messages and great plans of action for managers to live by. Thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate you joining us inside the ICE House.
Joan Woodward:
Thank you so much. It's very warm in the ICE House. You're very welcoming, so I appreciate your time and actually highlighting the mental health crisis is really important. So thank you.
Speaker 1:
That's our conversation for this week. Remember to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen and follow us on X at ICEHousePodcast. From the New York Stock Exchange, we'll talk to you again next week Inside the ICE House.
Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither I nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties express or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of the information, and do not sponsor, approve or endorse any of the content herein, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the proceeding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.
