Change begins with each one of us.
While UnitedHealth Group and its businesses support healthier communities through large corporate-wide initiatives, much of our effort occurs at a more granular level: Through the individual efforts of thousands of employees. Here are some featured stories about how UnitedHealth Group supports employees as they strive to make a difference.
If you are an employee and want to find volunteer opportunities in your area or lear more about the program, click here.
The goodness of groups: Community Action Councils.
You’ve seen the bumper sticker: “Perform random acts of kindness.” It’s a good idea, and UnitedHealth Group goes it one better by organizing our employees’ desire to make the world a better place by facilitating the creation of Community Action Councils (CACs). These CACs help groups of willing employees to get organized and launch specific volunteer programs.
The beauty of our Community Action Councils is that they are local, nimble, and focused on the events and causes that matter most to the employees themselves. And, they leverage the organizational and leadership skills that our employees display on the job.
Some examples of work done through UnitedHealth Group CACs include food programs for seniors and the disabled; volunteerism in clinics, hospitals, hospices and service organizations; health screenings at schools; and collections of phone cards and gas cards for needy families.
Supporting, celebrating and driving employee involvement: UnitedVolunteers.
Without Peter’s Retreat in Harford, Connecticut, over two dozen people living with HIV/AIDS would be homeless. Instead, they have a place to call home, good meals, AIDS education, medication management and health counseling. As a result, they consume fewer emergency health and social resources than they otherwise would. UnitedVolunteers helped coordinate volunteer efforts for this worthy cause.
Alzheimer’s disease is ravaging an increasing number of lives. Yet the disease itself remains a mystery. UnitedVolunteers coordinated an Alzheimer’s Memory Walk in Evercare locations across the country.
What is UnitedVolunteers?
It is a company-wide initiative to increase employee involvement in volunteerism. After all, experts tell us that the average volunteer donates 52 hours per year. Multiply that number by UnitedHealth Group’s more than 70,000 employees and the yield is over three and a half million volunteer hours per year. Quite a potential impact!
The United Volunteers website offers tools and resources that UnitedHealth Group employees need in order to choose volunteer projects. Employee-volunteers can even post details about their project, and view and celebrate the projects of others as well.
Building stronger work teams through volunteerism.
Once a week, a group of Optum employees in Atlanta leave their office building at lunchtime. Instead of heading out for a sandwich or a salad, they take a break to improve the nutrition and lift the spirits of dozens of seniors, as they deliver Meals on Wheels throughout the community.
While they are acting from the heart, they are also acting with purpose and organization, tenacity and attention to detail. Together they accomplish something that wouldn’t happen unless they got together as a team.
Fact is, much of the good done by UnitedHealth Group employees is strictly on their own time – after hours, over lunch or during weekends. Some community projects, however, require volunteers to work cooperatively as a team, over time, to accomplish a task. The teamwork skills involved in such activities – cooperation, respect, motivation, communication – can help team members work more collaboratively in their jobs.
We believe that such activities, therefore, do as much good for the company and as they do for the community. UnitedHealth Group fosters such team-building by allowing department managers to support and approve annual or periodic volunteer activities on a select basis when they also demonstrate that they function as team-building exercises. In these situations, time away from work is treated as regular, paid hours.
Executive Board Service Matching Program amplifies donations.
Many of the executives at UnitedHealth Group donate their time and talent by serving as Directors on the Boards of non-profit organizations and they often make a monetary contribution, too. For eligible executives, our Executive Board Service Matching Program matches their qualifying donations on a dollar-for-dollar basis to further support the non-profit’s mission and program initiatives.
The intended use and amounts of the funds must be known and approved in advance. To find out more, go to http://unitedvolunteers.uhc.com
