Let’s pretend we work the standard eight-hour day, from nine in the morning until five o’clock in the afternoon.
We want to do more with that than just work. Well, of course we already do more than ‘just work’ – we work hard, very hard; and we work for longer than eight hours a day, quite often. We also do a fair bit of pro bono work.
The thing is, we’re not always terribly structured about that sort of thing.
With that in mind, we were bouncing ideas around the team recently at a “team meeting” (for which read chatting over a tea and cakes at Heaton Perk, Newcastle) and came up with the idea of doing an hour‘s free work for charities, churches, community groups (or whatever!) for every training day we deliver.
A free hour, for every day we charge for.
So for every day of (let’s pretend) eight hours we spend in front of paying clients we’ll spend an additional hour working with and for clients who can’t pay. When you do the maths of one divided by eight, it works out as 12.5%. Round that off, and it’s 13%.
All of which is a long-winded way of saying that we’ll spend an average of 13% of our time working for nothing, nowt, zip, nada.
If you like the idea of thirteen-for-free, we’d like you to do one of three things. Just think, if enough of us do it, the country (and the world!) could be very different
- Do the same – and let people know you’re doing the same (and us, too!)
- Let other people know about what we’re doing – a mention somewhere would be nice; it would be great to know we’re not alone
- Book us – so someone gets their free thirteen. :)
Of course, if you’ve got any better ideas, let us know………!
This is a great idea, and a great re-investment back to the business community. I applaud your request to make it a national event, unfortunately I think there will be too many cynics who will say otherwise. But for your company, it makes sense and you’re doing a great thing.
At my company, this year I started a new initiative of donating money to charity on behalf of new starters as their welcome gift. A small gesture from us, but means we do something more meaningful than buying a token pen or something of that sort.