How CSAA Insurance Group makes optional in-office days worth the commute

During Ragan’s Employee Experience Conference in Nashville earlier this year, Shoshanna Leon, strategic communications lead at CSAA Insurance Group, told the audience that her company went remote during the height of the COVID pandemic and now has employees across 44 states. While this widened the company’s hiring pool, it also left some employees feeling isolated.

“Any time you’re remote, that loneliness is still there,” Leon said. “The need for connection is something we have seen in our employee experience surveys. People used to love being in the office and seeing their friends and chatting, and we don’t have that anymore.”

CSAA’s answer to disconnection is Together Tuesday. Once a month, employees are invited into the office for lunch, wellness activities and volunteer events. Leaders are told to skip closed-door Teams calls and spend the day with their people.

“I know a lot of people who have been asked to return to the office,” she said. “They swipe their badge. But they don’t have meaningful interactions. It’s more of a check-the-box situation.”

The launch of the Together Tuesday program made employees nervous, and Leon said that questions about RTO still pop up from time to time. The answer is always no, and she said that consistency took work.