IT workers with heart

For these companies, employee volunteerism means improved collaboration and productivity on the job

Computerworld – You might think Steve Kranson, who works at Comerica Bank in Auburn Hills, Mich., is your average IT manager. But he’s also been known to log hours dressed up like the Easter Bunny, to the delight of local kids.

 

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“At the end of the day, our people really feel good about what they’ve done. Whether visiting soup kitchens or delivering Meals on Wheels, it’s a great unifying event for our people, and it’s great for the communities and institutions we’re in,” says Comerica CTO George Surdu.

Texas Health Resources, whose tagline is “Healing Hands, Caring Hearts,” pays its employees for volunteer time served.

“I understand branding and marketing, but we actually live that at Texas Health,” says CIO Ed Marks. “One way we live that is to allow our people to volunteer and get paid for it.

“It has a huge impact not only on our perception in the community and with the people we serve but on our employees themselves. They come back changed and with a fresh outlook on what our role is in the community, what our role is in healthcare and what our role is in IT,” he says. Here’s a look at some of the volunteer activities IT teams have taken on, with win-win results.

Comerica: Connecting with the community

Banking is all about relationships, according to Comerica CTO George Surdu. Volunteering in the community, he notes, is one of the best ways to build those relationships.
ComericaMSWalk
Comerica Bank IT staffers and their families gathered at Comerica Park for a Multiple Sclerosis Walk.

IT workers like Kranson can volunteer on projects as individuals, such as dressing up as the Easter Bunny at a local fundraiser. They also regularly go out as a team, volunteering on projects that range from assessing IT systems for the Detroit Zoo to sorting canned goods at a local food bank.

Last winter, the IT department worked with the Detroit Tigers baseball team (whose home field is Comerica Park) to collect 600 pairs of mittens, which were donated to several nonprofit organizations in the Detroit metro area.

Mike Lawson, Comerica’s vice president of technology services, estimates that as a group, IT donates its time and skills to more than a dozen different charitable organizations. “It can be a form of stress relief,” he says. “It’s also a way for people to work with people they don’t [typically] work with,” he says.

Texas Health: Getting a different view of co-workers

Texas Health project manager Crow’s most recent volunteer project involved waxing and arranging lumber used in building a Habitat for Humanity home.

“We arrived early in the morning, and the house wasn’t fully framed yet, so I helped the guys who were nailing and hammering,” she recalls. “I did sweeping and other various things, whatever needed to be done.”
THSHabitat
IT staffers at Texas Health Resources tackled a community project with Habitat for Humanity.

Crow says that one of the biggest benefits of volunteering with fellow Texas Health IT workers is that such activities give her an opportunity to get to know her co-workers.

“I think it allows us to see each other in a different light, to see different skills than those we use on the job,” she says. “I was so impressed to see the skills of my teammates. People not in leadership roles at work took a leadership role on the house-building project because of their skills.”

She says it’s also incredibly rewarding to see the physical results of a day spent doing volunteer work. Day to day in IT, “people are normally sitting at computers coding,” she notes. “The work is all mental or in a computer system. Here, we get to see what we accomplished.”

As part of its community time-off benefit, Arlington-based Texas Health allows employees to take eight hours of paid leave to volunteer. “It absolutely affects how I feel about working here,” Crow says. “It makes me feel good that the company has this program as a benefit.”