CHS believes strongly in investing in our team members – our greatest asset. Perhaps my personal favorite investment is our annual leadership symposium; during our 2017 event, we posed this question to our attendees: “Are you a CHS renter … or are you a CHS owner?”

Think about the analogy.  Do you currently own or rent your home?  Does it make a difference in how you take pride in your home, how you approach its upkeep, and what and how you spend on home improvements?

For many, it does make a difference, doesn’t it?

As you can imagine this spurred a healthy debate among participants in the room, who represented everyone from our frontline contributors to CHS’ chief executive officer.

Our attitudes toward what we own and what we rent can be vastly different.  Generally speaking, we take care of what we own.  We let others take care of what we rent – or what they own.

Employees with a “renter mentality” may not care as much about company values or company resources.  They may be wasteful.  They may not clean up after themselves.  They may not always treat clients or customers with the respect.

While this may be a broad generalization, there’s some truth in there … and plenty of opportunities for continued discussion.

Employees who feel a sense of ownership, though, tend to go the extra mile to do right by the organization.

At CHS, we unlock the spirit of ownership by involving the team members’ hands, heads and hearts– meaning their skills, their creativity and their passion for our mission.  We do this by:

• Ensuring everyone has goals and an opportunity to help CHS achieve its mission.
• Supporting team members as they increase their own value by providing opportunities to professionally grow and develop their careers.
• Empowering people to solve problems and create solutions … even for challenges beyond their current scope.
• Including our team members at all levels, in all departments purposefully.  We take advantage of the richness our diversity gives us, and we use it for good by engaging our team members in helping us get it right.

And, finally, we see the whole.  We’re removing the territorial boundaries of our programs and our locations, literally taking the “division out of divisions” by creating new, matrixed operating structures that allow us to be One CHS.  We want—and need—our team members to be a part of our united force to end the need for foster care as we know it.

So, do you want to be a renter…or an owner?