During the months of January – April VAP held monthly Culture Committee meetings with small groups of Team Members to gain insight into what types of things they were interested in doing this year. After all Team Members participated in a meeting, action plans were put into place based on those suggestions. The Culture Committee topics revolved around internal engagement (things we can do daily to better ourselves as a collaborative team); external engagement (things we can do outside of work to engage one another); and community engagement (which charities are close to people’s hearts and how can we support them?). The insight gained from these team meetings was incredibly valuable. We learned that people want to go fishing or go to movies as a group. We found out that some Team Members like to be recognized by receiving extra time off, while others prefer a more sustainable pay rate increase. And VAP found out that our Team is a diverse group of people who care about many different causes.
One of the causes our Friendly Forklift Driver, Ronnie Manuel, cares about is blood donation. Ronnie suggested that VAP host a mobile blood drive to make it easy for Team Members to give blood. We thought this was a great idea, but when I contacted Community Blood Center they kindly informed me that since the general participation and eligibility rate of a corporate blood drive is about 10%, their costs would outweigh the benefits of hosting a drive on our lot. However, they invited us to participate in an annual drive hosted by Fairview Brethren Church which is located just a few minutes from our facility.
Value Added Packaging informed the Team about the local blood drive and offered an incentive for participation: all participants would be entered into a drawing for a Shell gas card. On July 1st, I’m pleased to say that 10 people (30%) traveled to Fairview Brethren Church and that 8 (24%) were eligible to donate blood! VAP is incredibly proud of our team, and it’s nice to know that even though we are a small company, we can make a big difference in our community.