Skaneateles, NY-- Welch Allyn today turned a team-building exercise into community building. More than 600 employees, or about half of the workers at the medical device maker's two plants in Skaneateles, skipped work this afternoon to volunteer at more than 20 non-profits in Cayuga and Onondaga Counties. For the past 20 years, the company has used one day every...
Skaneateles, NY-- Welch Allyn today turned a team-building exercise into community building.
More than 600 employees, or about half of the workers at the medical device maker's two plants in Skaneateles, skipped work this afternoon to volunteer at more than 20 non-profits in Cayuga and Onondaga Counties.
For the past 20 years, the company has used one day every summer for the Beacon of Quality Event, sort of a clambake/quality awards/team building event. In the past, the event has taken on a festival atmosphere at the company’s Skaneateles compound with games and skits, all aimed at promoting quality.
This year the company wanted to go further.
Welch Allyn often donates money or products to worthy causes, explained Chief Executive Officer Julie Shimer, as she served dessert this afternoon at the Samaritan Center in Syracuse.
“We thought it would be great to get more personally involved in the community,” she said.
Last fall 230 employees volunteered for six weeks at various organizations, and the enthusiasm they brought back to the plant was contagious, Shimer said. So the company decided to expand the effort.
The company shut the plants down to allow anyone who wanted to volunteer to do so, Shimer said.
Earlier in the day, workers got an update on the company, and applauded colleagues who received awards for quality.
Then tents that were set up on the campus became an assembly line for 200 workers packing bags for homeless shelters, needy school children and soldiers. Other workers fanned out across the community to, among other things, serve lunch to the hungry, paint dorms for the homeless, and clean up a camp for people with disabilities.
After all that hard work, they’ll return to the campus for a clambake.