KENT, Ohio — Community service isn’t just something SAGE Integration employees do throughout the year. It’s at the core of the company, embedded in the five key initiatives that were central to the foundation of the business six years ago under founder and CEO Eric Frazier.
“When we created SAGE six years ago, the vision was built around five initiatives,” says chief operating officer John Nemerofsky. “Number one was our employee engagement initiative, with the idea that good companies take care of the customer. Great companies take care of the employees.
“Our second initiative was customer obsession. Anything the customer needs, whenever they need it,” he says. “When they say, ‘jump,’ we don’t just say, ‘how high?’ It’s, ‘how long do you want us to stay in the air?’
“Number three is social responsibility. We thought it was critical that, wherever we’re providing service and have brick-and-mortar locations, we give back to those communities. Our number four is innovation,” says Nemerofsky.
“Our number five is financial growth,” he says. “People always ask me, ‘how does financial growth fit in there?’ Well, if we’re not growing, it’s hard to maintain all these programs. We’ve been fortunate to partner with a lot of great technology partners, clients, subcontract partners and distribution partners around the world.”
SAGE Integration’s Giving Spirit
For the last five years, SAGE Integration has partnered with Mission 500 to provide backpacks for students when it’s time to go back to school and others in Title I schools who may not be able to afford backpacks. Employees recently packed more than 200 backpacks in the Marietta, Ga., office, and did the same for Akron, Ohio, and McKinney, Texas, elementary schoolers earlier this month.
“We fill the backpacks with everything you need to start a school year,” says Nemerofsky, a Mission 500 board member who first saw the backpack stuffing during ISC West in Las Vegas. “Over the last five years of doing that, we’ve been able to help the schools reduce truancy rates by about 2%.
“We shut down the office for a couple of hours. All the associates in that regional office come in and we form an assembly line. Everybody’s got a spot, from handing the first backpack over to our founder and CEO Eric Frasier, who puts a notebook in the backpack and passes it along to our VP of HR, Lori Hudnall, who puts 10 pencils in the backpack, and the line continues on with everybody involved, and everybody feels good about contributing,” he says.
Nemerofsky will never forget one of the deliveries the SAGE Integration team made to the school staffers in McKinney, Texas, a few years ago.
“When they opened the boxes and realized that the backpacks were stuffed with notebooks and pens, they had tears in their eyes, they were so grateful,” he says. “It’s amazing the impact you can make with such a little thing. And the employees feel good about it. They’re proud to give back in the communities that we provide service in. And we love the thought of continuing to grow the program each year.”
Never Enough Giving Back
In addition to backpack stuffing on behalf of Mission 500 and supporting the annual 5K/2K walk-run at ISC West, SAGE Integration also participates annually in the Security Industry Association Women in Security Forum’s Dress for Success effort at the Security LeadHER Conference.
The company also challenges each of its eight U.S. offices to contribute the most canned food and frozen turkeys to its canned food drive around Thanksgiving and adopts families around the holiday to fulfill their children’s wishes.
Employees are participating the ASIS Fitness Challenge to raise money for that group’s foundation and are hosting the SAGE Charity Golf Classic on Aug. 23 in Atlanta in the hopes of raising at least $30,000 for a local police department to cover the cost of training a dog to join the force.
“Lori Hudnall and Svetlana McCully, our business operations manager, are always leading and driving new ideas to help volunteerism at SAGE,” says Nemerofsky. “We’re not doing it for recruitment but people are happy to hear that we’re involved.”
Nemerofsky credits SIA CEO Don Erickson and board of directors chairman Scott Dunn for their vision in launching an industry-wide effort focused on community service, with the goal of getting all security companies to give back in their communities on the first Friday of every June.
“I think it takes an association vision and leadership to get the whole collective industry involved, and raise awareness. You just watch everybody feel proud about the company. The employees feel good about who the company is, and they just don’t see all the profits going into our pockets. They see the company giving back to the community,” he says.
If you participated in Security Industry Community Service Day this year or are involved in other service-based initiatives, please contact SSI digital editor Craig MacCormack at [email protected] to be part of our ongoing Security Gives Back series.
Click here to read all the stories in our Security Gives Back series!
