Citizen Inc. Q&A: Tabatha Morrow

RELATED

Citizen Inc. from SBJ Podcasts

Tabatha Morrow, community engagement lead for Chase and its call center with over 1,000 employees in Springfield, is the guest for Citizen Inc., Episode 8, from SBJ Podcasts. The following Q&A is from the show, co-hosted by Springfield Business Journal’s Eric Olson and United Way of the Ozarks’ Greg Burris and recorded at ADsmith Studio.

Eric Olson: Your job is pretty unique to the others we’ve talked to on the show. Tell us about your role?
Tabatha Morrow: My role is everything community. I’m the community engagement and volunteer coordinator, responsible for maintaining relationships with the nonprofit agencies in our community, helping our volunteers learn what opportunities are out there, attending events, making sure that Chase is plugged into our community and understanding what the needs are.

Greg Burris: That job didn’t just happen. Somebody at Chase said our employees ought to be connected to our community. How did that happen? Is your job unique to Springfield?
Morrow: It didn’t just happen overnight. Chase definitely sees the value in investing in our communities. It’s what we consider our responsibility to the areas where we have employees and customers. There are parts of my role that are across Chase in all locations, but this specific role to Springfield is a bit more unique because we don’t have branch presence, so it’s important for us to be out in the community.

Olson: Not every company can afford to have somebody in a position like yours. What would be a way a small business can duplicate what you’re doing, maybe a first step or two?
Morrow: I would generally start within. No matter your employee population, you can always find out. This is what Chase does – we poll our 1,100 employees – and you can do that with one or 15 employees. And you find out what they’re passionate about, because that’s really what they want to invest their time in. We start communicating with the organization to find out what their needs are and find out how Chase can plug in.

Olson: What’s been the benefit to the staff?
Morrow: Employees are more engaged, usually higher performing, and they’re generally more loyal to the company.

Olson: What percentage of staff would you identify as being engaged through these programs?
Morrow: In the years previous to COVID, we’ve had 48%-50% of our staff involved, which was part of our goal. We saw that increase from about 30% over a two-year span when we were really focused on sharing those possibilities.

Olson: Do you find that there are common threads to people’s passions?
Morrow: I do. A lot of times, it’s life experiences, whether it’s a family member being impacted, or personally, by a disease or a situation that has led them to want to give back in that same area. Other times, people just have the heart to want to give and they see an organization that speaks to them. It’s usually a hardship or something of that nature. Personally, I’ve had many people in my family impacted by cancer – luckily, all survivors at this point. But I give a lot of my time to American Cancer Society for that reason.

Olson: There’s an investment being made here. Is that something you track?
Morrow: The way we track is based on the number of events we do. Our volunteer leadership group does a really good job of communicating out those successes. We share with them the impact we’ve seen. On an average year, we generally support 50-70 events and upwards of 5,000 volunteer hours in the community. I think it’s important to understand – like, one person, you may feel like your impact is small, but when you add it together with 500 other employees, you’re making a huge impact.