TEAM recently launched a new Volunteer Time Off (VTO) program to encourage its employee owners to give back to the community.
The employee-owned technology company developed the VTO program to provide community engagement opportunities for its employees that are meaningful and make an impact in the community in which they live and work.
“TEAM strives to make a difference in the lives of our employee-owners, and we’re taking this a step further with the Volunteer Time Off program,” said Judi Szatko, TEAM’s Vice President of Human Resources. “This avenue will help encourage pride and embed a strong community mindset within our culture and company.”
TEAM believes these types of activities also enrich and inspire the lives of employee-owners. Amanda Sullivan, TEAM’s Director of Marketing & Communications, said the company’s employee-owners are excited to contribute their hours to something that fits their talents.
“There’s been a lot of buzz around it,” said Sullivan. “It gives employee owners an opportunity to do something that is meaningful to them and give back.”
The program expands on TEAM’s already successful partnership with TeamMates, a youth mentoring organization that TEAM has supported since 2013.
All employee-owners can receive up to four days of VTO per year specifically to volunteer on behalf of the company. For a company that employs 124 people, giving them each 32 hours per year to volunteer is a large investment.
“We know it’s an investment and that’s the kind of investment we want to make, not only for our employee-owners and future employee-owners but for improving and contributing to the community,” said Sullivan. “It’s important to us to have a connection here.”
TEAM is a B2B company with approximately 400 customers all over North America. Their customer base is largely from outside the Omaha area, so reinforcing the company’s connection to the local community where employee-owners work and live is important.
Recommended volunteer activities support civic-minded and 501(c)(3) nonprofit community improvement organizations such as Youth Emergency Services, YMCA or TeamMates. Other activities can include those that address health and research initiatives like fundraiser run/walk events or volunteering at a nursing home, food bank or hospital.
In addition to making changes in the community, the VTO program is reinforcing TEAM’s company culture and increasing the stake each person has in the company.
“It’s about cultivating that culture around employee ownership. We all own the company so we hold each other to pretty high expectations, we’re the shareholders,” said Sullivan. “We think it’s really important to focus on not only what you can get out of it, but what having this kind of culture can enable you to give.”
Sullivan said that the more things like the VTO program that TEAM offers, the more chances they have of displaying their company culture to people who may not know who they are or what they do. That exposure has multiple benefits including attracting new employee-owners.
“As a tech company, we know that we’re competing for highly talented people,” said Sullivan. “You can be a developer everywhere but can you be a developer at a company that’s community-minded?”
Catch up on regional tech news with these recent top stories from Silicon Prairie News:
The Startup Collaborative invited Omaha’s innovators, entrepreneurs and supporters to their first-annual Startup Showcase and Expo at the Omaha Design Center on Thursday. The event was The Startup Collaborative’s new take on a demo day, adding in a startup bullpen, a pop-up stage featuring investors and startup ecosystem funders, and a speakeasy after-party.
The expo and showcase was a “high-energy celebration of growth for the 60 plus startups we continuously work with, and a dive into some of the emerging technologies driving future businesses,” said expo organizers.
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Nelnet announced this week it has completed the acquisition of Madison-based Great Lakes Educational Loan Services, Inc. from Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation.
A press release provided by Nelnet said the company paid $150 million for 100 percent of the stock of Great Lakes, following the satisfaction of all required closing conditions. The acquisition makes Lincoln-based Nelnet the nation’s largest servicer of federal student loans.
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I speak to a lot of student entrepreneurs, and someone always asks some variation of “how did you get/earn/find ________?” No matter what they’re asking about, I usually can distill it down to two main points: 1) Play the Odds. 2) Just Ask.
I know, it sounds super simple. “Duh, Paul. You have to do the work to see the reward.” But I think so many of us forget that it IS simple (I include myself in this pool, 100%.) We want the answer to success to be complicated or plain luck because then we can justify failure upfront and why not “to attempt.” We want the fallback (it’s complicated and expensive), the scapegoat (I just have bad luck) as if there’s some magical recipe for reaching our goals that we don’t know. Maybe that’s a cultural problem or a human brain problem – I’ll leave that part to the experts.
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The return of the tenth annual Big Omaha conference was announced today, but with one major change. This year, the inspirational tech conference will take place in conjunction with the Maha Music Festival.
The Big Omaha conference, now part of the Maha experience, will be held August 16 and 17 with venue details to be announced. Maha will be expanded to two days and will take place on August 17 and 18 in Aksarben Village.
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The no-cost program of the Greater Omaha Chamber pairs elementary through post-secondary students seeking engagement and information with regional businesses and nonprofits. The goal: to create career interest, grow the area’s talent pipeline and connect organizations with future employees.
For the second year in a row, AIM participated in Careerockit by facilitating tech learning modules hosted at Union Pacific Railroad. Approximately 25 AIM employees volunteered nearly 100 hours over the course of the week.
Youth explored technology and workforce readiness skills by working on authentic, real-life projects reflective of career skills needed at Union Pacific. The Engineers Who Code learning modules were “hands on/minds open” in design and allowed students to interact with career professionals.
During the Build a Web Page session, high school students learned about tech career opportunities in Nebraska, built their own HTML web pages, and found out about additional web development learning resources.
The experience allowed students to see and feel the culture of UPRR and allowed AIM to engage with other community partners such as OPS and Boys & Girls Club of the Midlands.
“An effort of this scale is only possible with countless partners and supporters,” said Patricia Mayorga, manager, talent, Greater Omaha Chamber. “We are extremely grateful to all the businesses and nonprofits that are participating and to our school districts at all levels from superintendents, to principals, teachers, and of course students. Everyone’s contributions have added up to this great and massive initiative called Careerockit––thank you.”
They will advance to the NSB National Finals this spring in Washington, D.C., as announced by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
“The National Science Bowl® continues to be one of the premier academic competitions across the country and prepares America’s students for future successes in some of the world’s fastest-growing fields in science, technology, and engineering,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry.
The National Science Bowl® is a nationwide academic competition that tests students’ knowledge in all areas of science and mathematics. Middle and high school student teams from diverse backgrounds are comprised of four students, one alternate, and a teacher who serves as an advisor and coach.
The King Science team faced off in a fast-paced, question-and-answer competition where they solved technical problems and answered questions on a range of science disciplines including biology, chemistry, Earth and space science, physics and math.
“I am proud to oversee a Department that provides such a unique and empowering opportunity for our nation’s students, and I am honored to congratulate King Science and Technology Magnet School in advancing to the National Finals, where they will continue to showcase their talents as the top minds in math and science,” said Perry.
The top 16 middle school teams in the National Finals will win $1,000 for their schools’ science departments. More than 275,000 students have participated in the National Science Bowl® in its 27-year history, making it is one of the nation’s largest science competitions.
The knowledge and study habits that former NSB competitors have acquired have led them to success in a variety of fields. Many have become researchers; others are science and math professors at some of the nation’s top universities.
The NSB said that the math and science knowledge students need to be successful in the competition can also lead to successful careers in other fields. The 2018 NSB competitors will follow in the footsteps of previous National Science Bowl® contestants and will blaze a trail for students in science, math and engineering for the next quarter-century.
The King Science team will be heading to Washington, D.C. to compete in the final round of the National Science Bowl® between April 26 to April 30.
Naomi See is committed to helping and supporting women in tech, mainly because of all the messages she got along the way saying tech was a path she couldn’t or shouldn’t pursue.
Naomi is a software analyst at West Corporation, where she has worked on everything from interactive voice recording software to automating internal processes and building mobile apps.
She is one of three organizers of this Saturday’s Django Girls workshop at Agape Red, along with Anna Ossowski and Sandi Barr. Naomi is also involved with Project 18, a movement to make Omaha the most tech-friendly city for women in the country.
Naomi says it is important to talk about the various barriers women in tech face. She says she began running into them at an early age.
“I was really interested in tech. I used to take computers apart, I would break OS systems on a regular basis, to figure things out and try to understand,” she remembers. “When I was young, I got told a lot that I shouldn’t. Any kind of interest I showed [in tech], I was just kind of shuffled on to something else,” she says.
She remembers a turning point, working at a job where she says her employers were condescending.
“I don’t want my intelligence challenged by these executives who don’t even know who I am,” she remembers thinking. “So I was like, I need to get to school.”
A tough place to break into tech
Naomi went on to get Associate’s and Bachelor’s degrees, and took the Java Specialization course at Interface Web School.
Despite her educational experience, she says Omaha was and still can be a tough place to break into tech. She says employers here tend to be less open to candidates without computer science degrees and multiple years of experience.
“It’s hard to get in that funnel if you are not going the traditional path,” she says. “It’s difficult when you meet people who have gone through a more traditional path and have their own career, they certainly have had their own struggles. But they don’t necessarily understand the struggle of literally not thinking you can do it, and then making the struggle to do it mid-life. It’s a different story to tell. I want to tell that story, and I want to help women to do that.”
Now, Naomi feels driven to share her experiences with people who want to shift gears. She says connecting with others in the tech community is crucial.
“Jump into the community as quick as you can. Find people who are willing to help you and latch on to them. It’s good to have people in the community who have been there, done that, who can not necessarily say ‘no, no, no,’ but can kind of guide you,” she says.
Naomi hopes the Django Girls workshop gives participants a taste of the power and creativity that comes with learning to code.
“I hope their interests are piqued and I hope they continue. The program has some additional learning steps after the class,” she says.
She is excited about the momentum of Project 18.
“What made me get involved in Project 18 is that I went to the second meeting and there were 50-plus people there. 50-plus people willing to do something. And that was huge for me,” she says.
Her goal is to have honest conversations about the hurdles women in tech face. She says when women approach her about getting into the field, her first question is, why?
“I also want to be very honest with them, this is going to be hard. This is going to take a lot of commitment, you are going to have to make sacrifices,” she says. “You have to go into it with a plan.”
But with enough hard work, she says a career can go any number of directions.
“You don’t necessarily have to work for a corporation. If you are motivated enough and you have the ability and the time, you can do your own thing,” she says.
Naomi says it’s all about helping people get to know and connect with each other, and build each other up.
“The stories of what women are experiencing haven’t been said enough. People have been shamed into thinking they can’t or shouldn’t share their stories,” she says. “I feel like that is a lot of what I experience in the Midwest, is a lot of ‘Nebraska Nice’ — don’t say anything negative. And it’s not necessarily negative, it’s the truth.The truth needs to be said in order for change to occur.”
