BLUEFIELD — When John Miller and his staff at Alorica in Bluefield were deciding what do for the holiday as part of the company’s Making Lives Better Alorica program, the cold weather had an impact.
“We were kicking around what we can do for the holiday season and we decided, it’s cold, and everybody needs hats, scarves and gloves,” he said. “We made a connection with Union Mission and that’s how it got started.”
Miller, who is manager of the Intuit/Alorica customer success center on Commerce Street, said the holiday project is called Give Warmth.
“It was a team competition between our three supervisors to see who can collect and donate the most,” he said, thinking that, with 70 employees, the total number of items would be around 300.
Some incentives were offered and the competition, as well as the camaraderie between the employees, took off.
When about 250 items were collected the first week, the challenge went up to 500 and then 750, Miller said, with more incentives.
In the end, the total surprised everyone because a couple of the supervisors were “sandbagging,” he said.
“We had 1,419 items,” said Letisha Odum Lamb, Alorica’s human resources director, adding that she was not surprised by the effort.
“All of our employees are very giving and kind individuals and they want to do what they can to help the community,” she said. “We are very, very thankful we can offer this many items to the Bluefield Union Mission.”
Craig Hammond, director of the Union Mission, said he appreciated the donations.
“The collection of all of these winter articles of apparel has been a huge, and I mean huge, success,” he said, adding that the items will go a long way because after Christmas very cold weather is predicted to embrace the area.
“This couldn’t come at a better time,” he said.
Hammond said he thanks the employees at Alorica for “this generous gift at this time of the year.”
Alorica, which manages the center that aids online customers for Intuit products QuickBooks and Mint, opened its doors this summer and will continue to expand, eventually moving into Intuit’s permanent headquarter in the Summit Bank Building on Federal Street.
The company plans to expand its workforce and gradually hire up to 500 people.
Miller said being involved in the community is important to the company.
“This is our payback,” Miller said, “because the community has supported us as we got things going and this is our way to give back.”
Miller said the company will continue to be involved in the community with more things coming up in 2020.
— Contact Charles Boothe at cboothe@bdtonline.com
Commented
Sorry, there are no recent results for popular commented articles.