Becoming a part of the change around us
How one partnership got employees moving to make a difference in their communities
Transformation is all around us. We see it happening in real time across our downtown core. We also see it happening in organizations such as RBC or the United Way.
Today, we live in a different world — enabled by technology and constantly changing. Those disruptive forces are propelling us to rethink the way we do things. In many ways, technology is demanding that we create even more meaningful relationships with our partners, our employees and our communities.
And in that way, disruption presents a tremendous opportunity.
Creating meaningful connections through technology was at the heart of a recent collaboration between RBC and our longtime partners at United Way.
The United Way knows, these days, its supporters want to go beyond simply making financial donations to truly giving of themselves. At RBC, we call this “skills-based volunteerism.” It’s really about tapping into our employees’ skills and expertise to give them an opportunity to help people thrive in the communities where we live and work. It’s something we’re now actively promoting at RBC.
With a shared excitement for finding a new way to partner, we realized we could combine the talent, passion and natural competitiveness of RBC employees with the United Way’s focus on bringing people together to solve local issues. And from that, we could create something great.
The #Create4Community Challenge did just that. It was a 36-hour Hackathon that brought together eight teams and nearly 100 RBC employees to deliver real-world solutions designed to help United Way transform its approach to community engagement and giving. We worked side-by-side with employees from United Way, learning more about them, as they learned more about us.
At the end of the two days, the teams presented an array of innovative ideas — from apps to wearables — all designed to better enable the United Way to help more people, in more communities. We’re putting a number of the concepts into production now, including the winning idea that will launch in 2017.
A friend once told me that you can tell a lot about people from how they spend their time. Maybe that’s why I am so immensely proud of the enthusiasm and dedication of the RBC employees, who volunteered to participate in the United Way Hackathon over that weekend in June. But in many ways, RBC was the true beneficiary of the collaboration.
By participating, our employees had a chance to give back and have a real impact on communities. There’s a lot of pride that goes along with that. Our employees also had the opportunity to step out of their everyday roles to use their skills in a new, creative way, and in a way that was visible to their peers. For some, it was a catalyst to take a stronger leadership role when they returned to their day jobs, and for others, it ignited an ongoing commitment to building on their core strengths to give of themselves.
Importantly, the #Create4Community Challenge was a validation to our employees that our purpose — to help communities prosper — is real. In fact, I think it’s one of the best examples of bringing a purpose to life that I’ve seen in my career.
If I can leave you with one final thought it would be that we all have something to give. We all have something we are passionate about. When you offer those skills and passion to a cause or organization like the United Way, only good things can happen.