Community involvement: Good for you, good for business

Molina Healthcare is a business, but at the most fundamental level we’re a wellness organization helping people in need. Our roots run deep through the bedrock of the communities we serve, and our mission revolves around promoting and preserving the well-being of those communities.
While not all businesses are as intrinsically built on community service as Molina, there are plenty of business-centered benefits to be realized from promoting a community-focused work ethic and celebrating volunteerism among employees in any business.
Volunteerism results in innovation
Offering paid volunteer hours for employees is a great selling point in talent recruitment and gives a nice boost to employee morale, but there is also an impact to the business beyond these more obvious benefits.
By spending time in the communities where they work and getting to know the consumers they serve, employees gain insight about the real issues facing local populations. They bring this insight back to the workplace, which often results in innovative business practices that eliminate wasteful and underutilized programs and refocuses resources on real solutions to client issues.
Companies that implement volunteer benefits in this way focus their efforts on the most needed and desired programs, making it clear to the populations they serve that they do care, and they are listening.
And while it sounds touch-feely, caring for the community builds consumer loyalty and helps establish brands, helping businesses to grow.
Living the mission
Companies built on a mission like Molina’s must constantly revisit their chosen mission to make sure it’s as applicable today as it was when the company was formed.
One way that Molina strives to “live our mission” is by continuing the Community Champions program, which works with partners in our community to care for society’s most vulnerable individuals. Community Champions are nominated by community-based organizations and given grants of $1,000 to give to the nonprofit of their choice.
Dr. Darrell Gray, a physician at The Ohio State University and one of this year’s Champions, works to provide education and screenings to underserved populations at high risk for cancer. Molina is constantly looking for ways to encourage people to get preventive screenings; by supporting people like Gray who are doing similar work, we all become stronger.
Building trust builds loyalty
Community Champions like Gray, other community-based partners and our own Molina volunteers know they’re making a difference, and reap great personal rewards from the work they do. But the network of Molina advocates built through these connections reflects on our company as a whole, creating an undercurrent of grass-roots messaging.
Those who benefit directly from Molina’s culture of service will share with others that our company really cares and will be there to serve its customers. And as a result, when given a choice, consumers will choose Molina.

Fostering a company culture of caring for the place we live and work results in personal and professional growth, and can help grow the bottom line, too.

 
Ami Cole is the president of the Molina Healthcare of Ohio, the state’s second largest Medicaid Managed Care Plan with 337,000 members.