Team-building exercise showcases utility’s values
ATLANTA—Executives from Southern Company Gas recently took time during their annual executive leadership meeting to focus on a unique team exercise: bicycle building. The group of nearly 50 leaders assembled 12 new bikes, which were then donated to kids from the Boys & Girls Club of Winder-Barrow.
Southern Company Gas CEO Kim Greene said the experience was about more than bikes or even business. “We’re showcasing one of the core values of our company, which is to ensure that our communities are better off because we’re there,” she said. “These bikes will build more than just relationships and skills between these teams today; they will work to enrich the lives of one of the communities we’re privileged to serve.”
While the Boys & Girls Club got the bikes, the executives did not go away empty-handed. “The team thought it was really gratifying to build those bikes and then immediately donate them,” Mekka Parish, PR and media relations manager for Southern Company Gas, told American Gas. “It was really rewarding for them to know that those in the community we serve were being positively impacted.”
According to Parish, it was the utility’s first experience working with the Winder-Barrow Boys & Girls Club, which serves about 150 kids.
Perez Watson, teen coordinator of the Winder-Barrow club, was on hand to accept the bikes once they were completed. “I can promise you they’ll be put to good use,” he said. “We couldn’t do the important work we do in the community without the strong support of companies such as Southern Company Gas.”
“We had a lot of positive feedback,” Parish told us, noting that the success of the bike building has led to conversations within the company about duplicating or perhaps even expanding on this kind of community connection in the future. “We pledge total commitment to the communities we serve,” she said, “and this showcases our core values. We’re looking at possibly developing partnerships with other organizations—and other utilities—to see what we might do in the future.” —Robert Bittner