We value our corporate culture as one of the most important aspects of the company, and one way we give back is by employing 1% community time. What that means is all employees get to spend 1% of their time helping a non-profit in the community, fully paid for by the company. With a typical 50 week year, and 40 hours per week, for a total of 2,000 hours, 1% comes out to 20 hours, or 2.5 days of community service time. Yes, it is optional, but a good number of team members take advantage of it.
What are some advantages of 1% time? Let’s take a look:
- Great for employee morale
- Powerful for team building and cross team rapport building
- Positive impact for the community
- Helps put things in perspective
We’ve had events with Junior Achievement, helped clean up a park in South Atlanta, and have an event with the Boys & Girls Club coming up.
My recommendation is to consider 1% community time for your company.
David,
It’s great to hear that you are putting your employee’s skills to use for the betterment of the Atlanta community AND paying for it! I love it!
I challenge you to go further and extend your 1% commitment to more of your company assets, 1% of product and 1% of equity. Marc Benioff at salesforce.com designed and implemented a 1/1/1 model as part of the company mission from their launch. Check out their foundation’s model. http://www.salesforce.com/company/foundation/
Keep up the great work!
Erik