Aetna - Test

Inflection point:  Facing widespread public distrust of health insurers, Aetna wanted to leverage its corporate social responsibility commitment to enhance goodwill among policyholders and communities.

Aetna has a long-standing commitment to philanthropy and employee volunteerism. Yet the public, including its own policyholders, were largely unaware of this. Focus groups in cities across the country revealed that policyholders, when informed of Aetna’s corporate social responsibility work, strongly endorsed these efforts. But they also demanded authenticity, a sense that the company was acting in best interests of the community, not its bottom line. Based on this research, Aetna developed a new corporate social responsibility strategy that aligned its philanthropic and volunteerism efforts to its corporate values as well as its community commitments.