 It takes much more than a strong bottom line to make running a business a truly rewarding experience. Financial success, if it is not coupled with a strong commitment to community involvement, can be a very hollow success.
In the business world our prime focus is on the bottom line, and at Strategic Staffing Solutions (S3), we have experienced 17 consecutive years of growth during good economic times and bad.
Our work force has grown from three at the start to more than 1,600 today and our revenues from zero to more than $100 million. Of course, we’re proud of that.
But we’re equally proud of the fact that each of our 21 offices in the U.S. and Europe adopts at least one local charitable cause to focus on and support in a meaningful way.
 This policy started shortly after our beginning when our Detroit branch adopted My Sister’s Place, a Detroit affiliate of the Women’s Justice Center that provides emergency placement, counseling, personal support and legal assistance to victims of domestic violence. Through the years, with hosting an annual run on Belle Isle and an annual golf outing, we have raised more than $250,000 to help women and children being served by My Sister’s Place.
We also took a very active role in the Detroit collaborative to end homelessness, including personally going out with caseworkers to see the problem up close, talking with the homeless to gain their perspective and learn their individual stories. This has evolved into a program devoted to ending homelessness in 10 years.
S3 executives serve on the boards of a wide cross section of community and civic organizations. They include Vista Maria, Big Brothers and Big Sisters, Mariners Inn, the Detroit Zoo, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Detroit Regional Chamber, Detroit Renaissance, the United Way of Southeastern Michigan and the Detroit Youth Foundation. Each of our branches has identified at least one charitable organization to which they devote time and money during the year.
Our community involvement and charitable giving took an inward turn in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina forced the closure of our New Orleans office and left much of our staff temporarily homeless. We immediately began shipping supplies of ever kind to our displaced employees and even created an interest-free loan fund for them as they rebuilt their lives while never missing a payday for any of them.
Detroit Free Press business columnist Tom Walsh called our actions “a heartening throwback to bygone days when most American companies and workers were loyal to one another.”
The author Nathanial Hawthorne once wrote, “Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us on a wild good chase and is never attained.”
Happiness comes from a commitment beyond ourselves – an emotional, moral and spiritual tie beyond our own inner ego to the community at large – to our fellow humans.
That is why community involvement and charitable giving are such an important part of the S3 corporate culture and why it should be a part of yours, too.
Cynthia J. Pasky is CEO and president of Strategic Staffing Solutions Inc., based in Detroit. Strategic Staffing Solutions paid for placement of this article.
|
