From New York to Sydney, SHL Gives Back to the Community
SHL teams across the globe take their passion for community service outside the workplace.
At SHL, our mission—professionally—is to empower leaders and their teams to make unbiased decisions throughout the employee journey.
Across the globe, we are also passionate about empowering the communities in which we work and live. During the second week of July, we actively engaged in community impact through dozens of projects with over 30 different organizations, ranging from animal rescues to soup kitchens. Our team members invested time and resources to people and projects in their local communities, and each experience was truly unique.
For example, our newly established New York team partnered with the Loisaida United Neighborhood Gardens (LUNGS) organization to help clear and beautify community gardens on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. LUNGS exists to “promote, protect, and preserve gardening and greening” of 52 community gardens in New York, and our team joined community leaders and local police officers to clean up two of them. They learned about LUNGS’ community outreach and received a history lesson about the changes in this vibrant neighborhood from the 1960s through today.
Larry Waldman, who heads up SHL’s Middle Markets business in the Americas, said: “It was an amazing experience and we are building a partnership to continue this work with them throughout the year. Today was a great way to start.”
Meanwhile, SHL’s Sydney team took advantage of many opportunities, including reflecting on National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee (NAIDOC) week in Australia, and volunteering at the House with No Steps.
SHL’s Community Impact Week coincided with Australia’s NAIDOC Week, which celebrates the history, culture, and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Our Sydney team gathered together to recognize and reflect on the traditional custodians of Australia. They discussed ways in which they can more actively contribute to this community.
In addition, the team volunteered at the House with No Steps, a disability service provider dedicated to helping people with disabilities live a great life through independent living, employment, and inclusive communities.
“I didn’t know much about the support that [House with No Steps] provided to people living with disabilities,” said Emma Routledge, one of our Sydney-based Commercial Managers. “The day was full of laughter and hard work as we put together the future herb packs with our buddies. We really all had a good assembly line going!”
SHL’s teams across the globe participated in dozens of other projects as well: Our Pretoria team supported women and children experiencing domestic abuse by taking resident kids to the zoo; our Singapore and Mumbai teams served food at soup kitchens; and several teams, like our Beijing team, raised funds to purchase critical equipment for shelters, and hosted food, clothing and school supply drives for families in need.
In a slight twist, our Thames Ditton (UK), Frankfurt, Gurgaon, and Minneapolis teams offered employment workshops and professional services like interview preparation and providing access to SHL’s world-renowned Occupational Personality Questionnaire (OPQ) to people who are under or unemployed. This allowed SHL employees to share their best-in-class tools to empower people with a hopeful future through the prospect of family-sustaining employment aligned with their interests and skillsets.
Overall, SHL’s Community Impact Week was filled with empowerment, learning, and reflection on how to continue giving back throughout the year. It’s a privilege to lead a team of global citizens who are passionate about the work they do to create a more inclusive and equitable workforce through non-biased, data-driven talent solutions, and that we can put our passions into action through empowering the communities in which we live and work.
