Monday, January 11th, I took my maiden voyage into the world of blogtalkradio show Compassionate HR My co-host Shenee Rutt ,and I wanted to start a show that featured HR Pros who were going beyond the call of duty to be stewards in their community.  The idea for this show was inspired from a conversation that I had with Karla Porter and Paul Paris. It’s something I really wanted to do, and I encouraged Shennee to be my co-host.  Our first show welcomed our guests from Oracle:

Meg Bear – VP of Application Development (HCM – Talent Management) – Based in California.

Vivian Wong - Director of of Application Development (HCM – Talent Management)- Based in California.

Amy Wilson – Senior Director of Strategy (HCM – Talent Management) – Based in California.

Angela Doyle – Director of QA (HCM – Talent Management) -  Based in Australia

I heard about the great work they were doing from their blog TalentedApps to help those in need at The Shelter Network.  This led to a conversation where I learned about many projects that Oracle supported their employees and teams to lead. I was so moved when I learned about the work that Angel Doyle, Vivian Wong and her team were doing to help Orphans in India.

Angela Doyle spoke eloquently about her desire to reduce her carbon footprint with her business travel incorporating environmental volunteering into her work trips overseas, and on her own time over the weekends. She has helped organize an event planting trees in Australia for Oracle employees, she has also organized a team event in India to help at a school for underprivileged children.  The school, run by an all volunteer staff, gave kids hope, education and life skills.   This inspired the folks at Oracle to dig deep and help this wonderful educational facility.  The team members gave generously of their time, and personal donations for such a great cause. 

Vivian Wong is the the Application Development Director for Talent Management products at Oracle. Born in China, grew up in Australia and spent the last 11 years living in California.  She’s passionate about helping others in need.  Like me, she is also an animal lover. 

Vivian said “Having managed a global team over the years, I also recognize the importance of team building, and the impact a group of individuals- with a common goal- can bring to the local community. Thus our team bonding activities usually involve the team deciding what they want to work on, finding a time that works for both the receiving organization + our project schedule. We usually celebrate our accomplishments and each other after.”  

Here’s a list of a few other projects the Oracle team has undertaken:

• The Shelter Network that helps homeless families and individuals.
• Alameda Food Bank – 30 people in the Talent Management area (across functions: Development, QA, Strategy etc) delivered a couple of tons of food in one afternoon. It also brought hunger awareness to everyone at the end of the project as they gave them the facts of how many people in the local community need to be fed.
• They volunteered at two different Orphanages in Hyderabad, India for 200 children.  During Vivian’s last visit to her team. She had an idea (on the flight to India) of helping the less fortunate.  Within a week her team pulled off this project to help the orphans.  They created a library of 100+ books for the kids, organized a talent show (where everyone was a winner and received a gift), and each teacher has received a gift as a token of appreciation for their dedication to the children.  According to Vivian “This was the most rewarding experience-seeing the smiles on those children.”

What’s more is that Oracle gave them the time and resources to take on these projects.  My guests reported that this was so much more valuable than the typical annual company picnic.  These volunteer projects built a stronger team.  It is projects like these that build employee retention because it increases worker gratification.  What drew me to want to interview this team of talented people was a quote on Vivian’s most recent blog post http://talentedapps.wordpress.com

“We at Oracle feel fortunate to have a strong support system at work that encourages managers and employees to give back to their communities. We have the tools and resources that are available to every employee:  we can either find available projects on our Global Volunteer intranet site or we can register local causes we care about and recruit volunteers internally. The company even gives us a little budget for snacks and refreshments, as well as team t-shirts. But that’s just icing on the cake.”

I only wish more companies shared these wonderful values.  Shennee Rutt and I are on the look out for people and their companies who are doing great things to make their communities a better place to live.  Please comment and let me know if you have other suggestions for people we should interview.    Our show will be bi-weekly on Mondays at 7:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

Your twitter pal,

@HRMargo