LexisNexis Cares—More Than 640 Hours Volunteered in One Day
September has always been a special month throughout LexisNexis® because it is the time of year we put extra focus on helping our communities and this year, we’ve gone GLOBAL. On September 17, we held our first ever LexisNexis Reed Tech Global Cares Day, where employees from around the world volunteered to help local organizations in their communities in ways that were most needed and impactful.
What is LexisNexis Global Cares Day?
As a company perk, all employees across LexisNexis have had the opportunity to volunteer two full working days each year to help a local cause or charity of their choice. In addition to this, we started an initiative this year called the Global LexisNexis Cares Day.
The launch of Global Cares Day not only adds more opportunities to help our local communities, but it also unifies our teams in an environment where it’s still challenging to come together as we continue to work remotely. We love making a difference in the community, it’s why we volunteer, but even more: it’s good for employee development and engagement.
Engaged employees are happier, healthier, and perform their jobs better. UnitedHealthcare and Volunteer Match conducted a study that revealed “volunteering has a proven positive effect on physical and mental health,” and research from the University of Georgia Terry College of Business shows that employee volunteering improves productivity and employee satisfaction in the workplace. Jessica Rodell, author of the research, says, “Overwhelmingly employees who volunteered gave more time and effort to their jobs, were more willing to help out their colleagues, talked more positively about their companies and were less likely to do detrimental things like cyberloafing or waste time on the job.”
What did we do to help our communities this year?
Around 160 team members from across our international locations collectively spent the day doing about 640.75 hours of work for a variety of causes. We had employees from the U.S., NL, Germany, Korea, Japan, Pakistan, India and China participate in this special day!
Cares day in the US:
More than 10 of our team members spent their Cares Day cleaning up a local park in Horsham, PA. They helped clear the grounds, removing branches, leaves and other items.
In Philadelphia a team of 10 spent their Cares Day volunteering at a local food shelter. Some of the team helped prepare and clean vegetables, while others washed utensils and ensured they had clean dishes to serve food.
One of our teams in Philadelphia, volunteered at “Cradle to Crayons” helping sort through large quantities of donated articles and sorting them out to help with the distribution to children in need. It takes a lot of man hours to go through all the donations.
Cares day in Europe:
In the Netherlands, our team spent their day paddleboarding around a local canal and picking up trash floating in the water. In one volunteer day, the team retrieved many bags of trash.
In Germany, the team traveled to a local community affected by flash flooding . The flooding had swept tons of unwanted garbage into community areas. Garbage, like broken tree trunks, public garbage bins, and lamp posts, litter the town. In this photo, our volunteers clean up the grounds of a kindergarten. The team cleared the debris to ensure that the children from the kindergarten do not get hurt when they go out for playtime.
Cares day in Asia:
As a symbol of “protection”, our team members in Korea sewed book covers from upcycled materials to be donated to unprivileged kids. Due to Covid cases, they shared the experience through Teams, but the spirit and comradery was strong.
Some team members in China team members took their CARES Day beyond just one day! From August to September, the whole team, made strides to change their behavior and contribute to carbon reduction by taking less transportation. They did this by “donating” their steps everyday to an NGO that is building village schools and facilities for underprivileged kids. The NGO collected steps from people all over the country via an app to support their construction projects.
Also in China, a couple other colleagues joined a Red Cross rescue training.
One of our team members in Pakistan donated and served food for about 100 daily wage laborers working on a nearby construction site.
Mission accomplished!
We aim to make a global impact by putting our organizational talents to use and coming together wherever we are located around the world to help our local communities. A million drops make the ocean and small change around the world can cause a global transformation. Even though we all worked on solving different problems using equally different means, we all made a difference together. As a team, we look forward to our next opportunity to go out and engage with our communities.
Come and join us! Global Cares Day is just one of the many benefits we have here at LexisNexis. If you are interested in learning more about our employee culture and how to join the team, visit our Careers page.