At Roadster we are driven to modernize the car buying & selling process for everyone involved. So much so in fact that DRIVEN is the acronym that represents our culture and defines the values we live each and every day—Roadster employees are dedicated, real, inclusive, visionary, empowering & well.. never boring!
We hire for these shared values. It is our secret sauce so to speak. We do this because we know that our dealer experience starts with how DRIVEN our employees are to be their advocates.
So, while we live these values every day and it fuels our efforts— we also have initiatives focused on celebrating them in different ways.
Last month we celebrated the first of our treasured values: Dedication.
We define dedication as being passionate, focused and hard-working. While it’s easy to put those words on paper, it’s something else to see them in action.
We put our dedication to work in our communities and have begun providing quarterly volunteer opportunities for our team members. Since we have a lot of people that work remotely across the country, we made sure to encourage everyone to take time each quarter to volunteer in a capacity of their choosing, Simply put, we offer every employee 2 paid days a year to showcase their dedication by volunteering in their communities, wherever that may be.
This isn’t a particularly unique idea as more and more companies offer paid time off to volunteer. According to one report, nearly 1 in 4 companies and nonprofits in the U.S. are using a VTO (Volunteer Time Off) program as another perk to add to their roster of corporate benefits. That’s a big increase from just 10 years ago when only 15% of companies offered any sort of paid time off program to volunteer. But as more and more millennials enter the workforce, there is an increased desire to really take social responsibility seriously.
We coordinated our first volunteering events in both our San Francisco and Burbank offices to happen on the same day. The team in San Francisco spent the morning volunteering with the Golden Gate National Parks Conservatory. We spent two hours cleaning up Ocean Beach, a vast beautiful beach that lines the west side of the city. The weather was unseasonably warm, and the beach was littered with trash, probably due to an increase of beachgoers from the previous few days. Our ranger told us that 100 people had cleaned the beach just 3 days before, which was astounding given the amount of trash we saw. We filled countless buckets up with litter, and were truly amazed at how much debris people leave behind.
The team in Burbank spent three hours serving a lunch meal service at The Midnight Mission, a non-profit based in Los Angeles. The Midnight Mission serves nearly one million meals per year to homeless and low income individuals and families. We immediately realized while at the facility that this organization does so much more. They offer services towards self sufficiency, including 12-step recovery, family living, job training, education and workforce development programs. We had the pleasure of getting a tour of the organizations facility from an employee that went through the program themselves. As one employee remarked after leaving the facility “We’re so very fortunate to be able to spend time helping the Midnight Mission. They’re doing amazing work and it’s awesome for our team to play a small part today, we have to get back again. Selfishly it’s the most important thing I’ve done in a while, I know a few others felt that way also.” We left feeling very touched to say the least.
What really excited me about our volunteering event was the turnout and participation we had by the team. In San Francisco, we had nearly 30 people come out for our day, which is almost 70% of our SF team. And in Burbank, 90% of the team participated. These numbers absolutely reinforced that we have a team that truly takes social responsibility seriously, and a team that is dedicated to doing something about it. We are excited about the possibilities ahead that we can provide in our communities.
Up next, we’ll be celebrating the fact that our employees keep it “Real”. There are so many great ideas being bounced around that I am excited to see where we land.
We’re always looking for people to join the Roadster team. If you think you embody our DRIVEN values, check out our open positions today!
Written by:
Lisa Macnew
VP of People, Roadster