National Life Group has become known in our communities and our industry as a Do Good company that lives its corporate values. But we all know a company doesn’t really do all that good. It’s the people who work here who make the good possible.
So we’re on a mission to celebrate the Do Gooders among us. This week, we’re adding a new feature to The Weekly. We’re calling it Spread the Good and we intend to use it to help spread the word about the good that our employees do, whether here on the job or in the community.
We will need your help, and we’ll get to that in a minute. But first an explanation of what we mean.
The newly established Culture Team has made the point that our Do Good culture extends well beyond the initiatives that we get attention for in the community. Yes, volunteering at the food banks in Texas or Vermont, for example, is great.
But what about the one-to-one interactions that we have with each other or with our clients. Those are what define us and enable us to make good on our promises to bring peace of mind to everyone we touch.
There’s more to this company, so much more, than life insurance policies and annuities and mutual funds that we sell, as vitally important as our products are. Just because those products are among the best in the business, no one would be interested if they didn’t have a good impression and a good experience with National Life.
So let’s recognize what builds our reputation and our brand. That’s what we intend to do internally. We will Spread the Good whenever we come across great examples.
To get this ball rolling, we asked our colleagues in the contact center to share with us some examples. These are some examples from early May. (We’ve lightly edited some of this to remove any potentially personally identifiable information.)
“Lorraine calling. … I am calling because I want to compliment one of your customer service representatives. Her name is Christina Torres. I just got off the line with her and she was on the line with me and an interpreter … who spoke Mandarin and she helped through the whole process and I just want to let you know that she did an excellent job. Thank you.”
“I am Maricela … and James was along to help me. I really appreciate it because he walked me through the <> RMD that I am supposed to get on the 20th of May or so. I really appreciate it because he spoke very professionally in simple terms. And I asked him to slow down and he did. I really appreciate it and you have a good employee with you. Thank you very much. “
My name is Amor. … Kelly Knapp was helping me. I just wanted to call and tell you how much I appreciated her help and I felt like I was getting the runaround the last two weeks but it’s with the big annuity issue, tech issue, and she just went above and beyond helping me figure out what was needed, what was wrong, what needed to be done. Just getting to the right person to figure out what has happened and just her patience and the way she helped me in guided me in the way that I needed to have a better understanding of what actually was happening, why my policy is not getting issued, and why the errors were taking place. I am just so grateful the way she handled everything, the way she spoke to me and that she was patient and kind.
I’ve been dealing with Jodie Grandbois. … I’ve been talking with you people for a couple, three years I’ve been on this policy, our life insurance policy, and she has been the most helpful out of the everybody you got there. So I say give her a good raise.
“Hi I’d like to leave a message regarding Dwight Dorsey. I really think he did a very good job and he’s very patient. You know, very enthusiastic in helping me resolve all the problems. I’m an agent. I really appreciate his service and I look forward to working with him and thank you.
Thank you to all of the employees who are mentioned in these recent messages. We know very well that they are just a very small but representative sampling of the ways we affect people’s lives both large and small.
We’ve got more examples that we’ll be sharing here in coming weeks. And the Culture Team is working on even more ways to recognize the work that individuals do to make our culture match our values.
But we know there are a lot more instances out there of our teammates all around National Life whose actions give life to our culture and values. They might seem to be random acts of kindness but taken together they’re so much more.
So we really hope that you’ll Share the Good when you see it happening. Please send a note to us at Weekly@NationalLife.com. Or you can tip off Ross Sneyd or Tanya Culcleasure and we’ll sleuth out the details on your behalf.
We’re eager to celebrate and Share the Good.
(Photo Caption: Montpelier employees helped to Spread the Good by organizing a vigil in memory of high school students who were killed in a car crash last fall.)