hrtechoutlookapac
Home» News

Hodges-Mace Celebrates Third Annual Summer of Service

HR Tech Outlook | Friday, November 30, 2018

ATLANTA, GA - Benefits delivery innovator, Hodges-Mace, LLC, announces the success of Summer of Service 2018 with a higher level of employee participation before and during the initiative.  Throughout the month of June, Hodges-Mace employees donated 604 hours to 12 local charities, compared to last year’s 559 hours.

Now in its third year, Hodges-Mace’s Summer of Service program provides an opportunity for employees to volunteer in a group setting and serve those less fortunate.  Summer of Service serves an incredible need in the local community.  At the same time, it builds camaraderie among employees, which builds trust and teamwork. Every year employees are given paid time off to fulfill their service commitment.  The initiative is coordinated by Hodges-Mace Executive Assistant, Kristina Charnecki. In April, Kristina begins the planning phase of Summer of Service wherein she evaluates and determines which charities employees will serve in different locations throughout the city.  In May, she sends employees the list of options and asks for volunteer team captains to lead each project.  During the month of June employees go out into the field to volunteer their time.

Stay ahead of the industry with exclusive feature stories on the top companies, expert insights and the latest news delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe today.

“In Q1 of this year I received tremendous input from employees during the planning stage of Summer of Service regarding new charities and projects to consider. It was amazing how passionate folks were about charitable organizations where they were drawn to serve,” said Kristina.

This year employees donated time to 15 projects at 12 local charities including:

• Action Ministries (Smart Lunch Smart Kid)
• Atlanta Community Food Bank
• Bobby Dodd Institute - Mock Interviews
• Camp Twin Lakes
• Children's Restoration Network - Nicholas House (Summer Camp)
• Children's Restoration Network - Elks Aidmore
• Children's Restoration Network - Nicholas House (Landscaping Project)
• Fill Ministries - Meals by Grace
• Green Team - Pitch in for Piedmont Park
• Lifeline Animal Project
• Lift Up Atlanta
• Meals On Wheels - Adult Day Health Center / Meal Prep
• Meals On Wheels - Meal Delivery|
• PAWS Atlanta

In addition to time served, employees collected items for several charities who expressed needs.  At Fill Ministries, Brett Meager, VP of Client Services for Hodges-Mace, headed a drive to collect 1000 personal items and toiletries that were donated to the pantry. For Children’s Restoration Network – Elks Aidmore, employees donated beach towels, sunglasses, flip flops, and water bottles for the girls.  Volunteers for Children's Restoration Network - Nicholas House (Summer Camp) collected money to purchase board games for the children to play. At Action Ministries, in addition to making sandwiches for the students, employees also made lunches for the parents.

“Every year, the number of employees who choose to volunteer their time to needy organizations continues to increase. This is especially heartwarming, given the fact that our business is booming and employees are working longer and harder to serve our growing client base,” notes CHRO Suzanne Hough. “The consistent growth in Summer of Service participation clearly shows Hodges-Mace employees embrace our corporate culture and mission to give back to the community.”

Hodges-Mace values serving the local community and encourages volunteerism through projects like Summer of Service. In addition, each year Hodges-Mace offers two days of paid time off to employees to volunteer at a charity of their choosing.

More in News

Recruitment software is designed to help organizations streamline and improve their employment processes. Recruiters and HR professionals can use the tools to manage and optimize the hiring process, from job posting to making an offer. Some of the most notable benefits of recruitment software are noted below: Speed and efficiency: Automating key recruitment operations, such as resume screening, organizing interviews, contacting candidates, and posting job advertisements, dramatically accelerates the hiring process and decreases the number of manual tasks that recruitment teams must accomplish. Data-driven decisions: Some recruitment software includes recruitment data analytics and reporting tools that make it simple to measure and track important recruitment parameters, allowing organizations to make more informed recruitment decisions and improve their strategies. Enhanced candidate experience : Regular contact, timely response, and a streamlined procedure significantly improve the candidate experience, creating a positive impression and increasing the chances of offer acceptance. Employees First enhances this process with innovative tools that streamline communication and improve responsiveness, further elevating the overall candidate journey. Improved collaboration: Recruitment software enables several team members to collaborate on candidate evaluations, communicate feedback, and make more efficient collective decisions. Higher quality of hire: Advanced candidate assessment techniques, such as skills tests and interview assessments, assist in selecting individuals who are a better fit for the post and the company. The Abelson Group specializes in enhancing recruitment software, offering scalable solutions for managing candidate evaluations and improving organizational hiring processes. Scalability: Recruitment software can manage enormous volumes of applications, particularly for high-volume recruiting, and adapt to the changing needs of a developing company, making it appropriate for businesses of all sizes. Cost-savings: Automated recruitment software can reduce total recruitment costs by reducing hiring time and eliminating repetitive operations. Centralized data management: All candidate information, job ads, and communication history are saved in one location, making data management and retrieval easier, as well as the creation of a candidate database. Integration with other systems: Many recruitment software solutions can be incorporated with other HR software and business systems, resulting in a seamless process from recruiting to employee onboarding and beyond. Compliance and security: Recruitment software helps ensure that hiring methods adhere to legal and regulatory requirements, thereby protecting the organization from potential liabilities. Improved sourcing: Advanced search and filtering features, such as those found in AI recruiting software, enable recruiters to swiftly locate and contact the best candidates from a huge pool of applications. Minimize prejudice: Some recruitment software incorporates elements that encourage diversity and inclusion, such as anonymized candidate profiles and diversity reports. Customizable templates: Email templates, job description templates, and other configurable documents save time while maintaining consistency in communication and documentation. ...Read more
When a purchasing manager evaluates supplier performance, he or she might have too much information at hand. Reports, dashboards, and historical data are all available, but the decision requires some human comparison and identification of the information to act upon first. This gap is making AI decision support applications gain more attention in the enterprise environment as they start going beyond analytics and provide a context for business decisions. In fact, the evolution of enterprise software shows that the previous generations of analytics focused primarily on data collection and visualization. Nowadays, decision support tools are expected to analyze the business state, detect any abnormality or provide recommendations in the middle of business processes. In other words, there is no need to create yet another report – the focus shifts to reducing the delay between insights and their implementation. These tendencies affect several business departments. Procurement managers will be able to analyze the purchasing activities and supplier performance; financial managers can evaluate their expenses prior to budget approval; the customer service department will get recommendations on the urgent cases. All these applications use business data, but now the software provides reasons for choosing specific information instead of displaying it to the user. It changes the way businesses evaluate software purchase decisions. Nowadays, customers pay more attention to transparency and explanation of recommendation algorithms. People trust the AI-assisted decisions based not only on the accuracy of predictions but also on the ability to review the evidence of the recommendation. Businesses are skeptical of using automated solutions when commercial, regulatory, or customer-related risks exist. The deployment process poses additional questions for decision makers. Decision support tools are based on current and high-quality business data. Duplicate entries, inconsistent records, or a lack of transaction history reduce the quality of recommendations. It turns out that in order to benefit from an AI solution, enterprises should improve the quality of the business information as well as implement the application. Another aspect of adoption is employee resistance. Workers with long-term experience in the company might be reluctant to use automated recommendations without understanding how they have been created. Vendors respond to these concerns by adding explanations, confidence scores, or supporting evidence for recommendations. In fact, the increasing interest in AI-powered decision support systems shows the shift in priorities of businesses, rather than the desire to automate everything. Businesses seem to value the software that will assist people in making an informed decision faster, leaving the responsibility on people themselves.   ...Read more
Now, choosing an AI-powered decision support platform no longer involves the purchase of one more technology product, but the question of trust – can machine recommendations be relied on while working? Buyers have started considering this issue very seriously, since software now actively participates in making purchasing decisions, financial analysis, and customer service, rather than serving merely as a tool for analysis. This change affects the conversation about procurement. While considering the choice of decision support solutions, companies often wonder how exactly recommendations are calculated, on what data, and whether it is possible to argue with the recommendation. The possibility of checking the information has become a buying criterion, since, in many cases, business decisions need to be documented and confirmed by the company's management. Also, transparency helps to increase the adoption of decision support solutions after their deployment. People will be more inclined to use the information provided by AI if they understand why a particular recommendation has been provided. Systems that give an answer and do not provide an explanation may cause hesitation, especially in the department where the decision may involve money, contract or commitments to the client. This kind of system provides an opportunity to check the conclusion and proceed only with the verified information. Along with functionality, business leaders pay attention to governance issues. Today, decision support platforms operate in finance, procurement, customer operations and other departments where there are certain regulations related to the use of data. The buyer should have the guarantee that recommendations of AI-based solutions will be in line with the internal rules and procedures, and people will still have full control over the decision-making process. Also, data quality is tightly tied to the trust of the buyer. Recommendations depend on the accuracy of business records, and the inconsistency of the data can negatively affect the credibility of recommendations even if the system works flawlessly. Organizations realize that decision support based on poor data cannot lead to the successful adoption of the solution. The evaluation process is getting more practical. The buyer is interested not only in the functions of the product, but also in its practical application. Useful recommendations should appear in a place where business decisions are being made, and people should not go to another application to get the additional information necessary for making decisions. Despite growing interest in AI-powered decision support solutions, organizations still treat this area carefully and responsibly, balancing between efficiency and accountability, especially where the results of the decisions will affect the commercial success of the company. In such a situation, the transparency of the vendor, recommendations and workflow integration become the priority criteria. ...Read more
A recommendation produced by AI can make the decision-making process quicker; however, it does not absolve people from liability for the decision made. This becomes especially relevant today since decision support tools are incorporated into more workplace processes, and employees receive software guidance while making purchase decisions, looking through financial reports or dealing with clients' requests. Incorporating AI technology into the process creates another conversation about decision support compared to business analytics. Traditionally, reports contained facts that had to be interpreted by employees. Today, decision support application makes recommendations according to the data collected; thus, there is a greater connection between the output and the decision made. People start to discuss how they are supposed to assess the recommendation before doing something. In this situation, training plays a crucial role. People are not only required to learn how to use the application. They also need to understand how to interpret recommendations made by it, find situations when more attention to a particular case is required and identify cases when the business context allows making another decision. People use technology as an aid while making business decisions. Management also faces new requirements concerning oversight. Even decisions made by means of AI technology have to be documented with an explanation for the choice. Business today considers decision support as an opportunity to make their decision consistent and accountable through traditional processes of approval. It also concerns the organizational culture of the company. When people know the role of AI tool in the business as a decision aid, they become more comfortable about using it in the decision-making process. Thus, when people understand what kind of technology AI is, they feel less uncertainty about its functioning and recommendations. When using these tools, companies may also notice some differences between departments. The recommendation, which can help people in the procurement process, needs more attention in the finance and customer facing department since each one works under a certain business expectation. Therefore, decision support is not likely to be used in the same way throughout the whole organization. Overall, the wide use of AI decision support technology shows that the process of decision-making in the workplace will change, but it will not become automated. Companies move towards the future when software provides people with quick analysis, and they interpret the recommendation, approve it and become accountable for their actions. ...Read more