Had a good morning. The company I work for, IMC, an infamous megamultinational corporation (hence the name, Infamous Megamultinational Corp), is celebrating a milestone anniversary this year, a number of years since its founding that is divisible by ten. So we are celebrating.
Are we having big expensive parties? No.
Are we getting big bonuses and creatively attractive stock options? No.
Are we getting new furniture, shaded parking lots, freshly painted buildings, anything like that? No. (Lab tools? Newer computers? Ha ha ha.)
No, the company decided to mark its many years of making money by getting the employee base to log a million hours of community volunteer time. Not each of us -- that would be hard -- but as a collective, and that's actually doable. And so I spent the morning with a dozen comrades at a Habitat For Humanity project in one of the area's more challenged neighborhoods, helping with the construction of a house that will soon be home to a family with seven children, one of them in a wheelchair. I know no more about the family, but the house will be tightly packed: Five bedrooms in fourteen hundred square feet. Still, it will be new, and by whatever scheme HFH uses, it will be theirs.
Sometimes I think that as hives of corporate greedheads go, mine is okay.
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Don
I'm too serious
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12 comments:
I don't get it. You guys did all the work. What did the company do?
Did the CEO carry hod? WTF?
The company made us do it. The company let us do it without having to mangle up a weekend. The company paid for all our time even though we weren't accomplishing squat for it that day. The company bought pizza. I don't know. What are you complaining about? The CEO probably logs his volunteer hours by talking to school children, I don't fkn know.
sounds quite commendable, thanks to the employees.
when we lived in the central sierras, i saw HFH do amazing things for families in the small mountain communities.
Big props ;) And it felt good, eh?
This is really common these days with the IMC's isn't it. Citigroup do it here in NZ - planting tress was the task for this year. No one was keen to do it I'm afraid.
Oh...the company paid you to do it. Why didn't you say so? That is commendable. So, your CEO was playing golf with the CEO of some other company and bet him a hundred dollars his company would log more community service time than the other guy's company. I think that's how United Way works.
My company (also a multibazillion dollar international conglomerate, though of the rag-trade kind) does something similar with charitable groups here in NYC -- HFH, God's Love We Deliver, a cancer care center in Harlem. I think it's a great thing...and it's extremely valuable to go out and be of service, even if it's only for a few hours a few times a year, instead of indulging in the great American pasttime, consumerism.
Goodonya, Don.
Volunteering, helping the community, is a big part of this company's culture. You might think it would just be a PR trick, but actually it's driven by employees, and the company kicks in support as a way to keep people empowered and happy, not to mention it was started and is run by people who care and stuff anyway. (Sometimes I wonder if I'm an unapologetic capitalist because I work with and know the people -- seems to me most capitalism-haters are typically college professors and journalists and like that.)
Now I'm all embarrassed for not being cynical. Dammit.
As you point out, it's driven by employees. My original question related to the fact that you seem to be equating something that is done by the employees with something that is done by the company.
It's a little clearer now that you make it clear you were all "volunteering" on company time, although it's probably worth remembering that the contribution is tax-deductible. So all of you contributed eight hours of labour, for which the company will end up paying for maybe six or less. Still means you guys gave more than Company Inc. did.
Now I'm all embarrassed for not being cynical. Dammit.
Must I come thump you? Good thing ya did. Don't question it, baby.
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