So I've been in leadership for a long time, but I've also worked my way up. Started as a dock worker, then drove MHE, and earned my leadership stripes and have been having a great career. I'm in logistics and love it.
Anyway, we have an initiative every year where we asked the staff what things they'd like us to do. Community Involvement was a big call out. And in my opinion and easy win. We could do a few in-house food drives, things such as that. But instead leadership started to push towards going to a donation site and volunteering our labor. Again, that's fine. And they wanted them to do it during their shift. GREAT! Off site and getting paid to help out those in need.
But, of course, they wanted the associates to do this off the clock. I argued that it is the company volunteering our labor…not the hourly associates. Leadership just couldn't understand that. I argued that we could give them PTO, or gift cards, or SOMETHING that would make up for the lost hours. Or better yet, just pay them!
Well guess what? Nobody wanted to do it. So we went from having a simple food drive that could maybe help out a few families to absolutely nothing at all.
I swear, people that have never lived paycheck to paycheck don't understand that even 4 hours of pay can make or break the bills for the month.
C'mon. Do better.