Soft Touch during Hard Times
Even with the most astute money management, there are times when life still sends us financial tremors that can add up to a debilitating earthquake.
An elderly parent moves in, a child has a rare medical disorder, and on and on.
That is when our Employee Assistance Fund enters the picture. It is a grant program run through The Foundation for Enhancing Communities (TFEC). If one of our team members faces an unexpected hardship, they can apply through TFEC. Annual grants of up to $1,000 per employee are available.
Team members can use the grant for a security deposit for a new apartment, the broken plumbing they could not afford to fix, the root canal they need. Often, it goes for housing, legal costs, educational expenses, and the like.
The grants are entirely confidential. Our executive team doesn’t know who applies. Dasher’s Human Resources team helps our team with applications.
Always Looking Out
Still, we continuously keep our ears open for what is happening on our team. If someone is struggling, having a hard time buying groceries and putting food on the table, for example, we may act discreetly to buy them Giant gift cards. We put them anonymously on people’s desks. We often collect items for someone who may need necessities, such as onesies for a newborn baby or household times needed after a team member suffers a devastating fire or just bought their first house.
We often place canned food in our shared office kitchen, so a team member in need can take them quietly and without embarrassment.
Among our other benefits is our “Say Something Nice” whiteboard. It’s our chance to uplift others.
Team members may write, “Janice’s hair looks awesome today,” “Thanks to whoever bought the donuts” or an inspirational quote. Anyone can pick up a marker and write an encouraging message.
Team members looking to further their education can also apply for tuition assistance. Many times, we help with costs if the studies are work-related and will improve and inspire our team member’s performance. For example, one of our community health care workers earned their certification as an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), and we paid for it. We love having an EMT on our team, and they love their work.
With COVID-19, team members’ needs escalated. We took two bags of food and other necessities to everyone. It included masks, nonperishable food and paper towels, accompanied by “fun stuff” such as mugs.
These programs boost morale and engender loyalty. Many of our team tell us our approach is a welcome change from the impersonal approach taken by – in our view – too many other companies.
We don’t do it for praise or gratitude. We do it because caring is the right thing to do, and it inspires that in our team. Kindness is contagious.
Dasher is a data-driven, customer contact services operation with a focus on communicating complex messages to diverse populations. Specific capabilities include face-to-face communications provided by our field teams, customer engagement strategies provided by our call center and member engagement staff, and secure, complex, variable mailing services provided by our production team. Dasher is an experienced Minority, Women and Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (MWDBE) with a bestselling book, “The Talent Pool,” and is certified by AICPA with the SOC2SM Type2 data certification and validation.