Because the average American spends one-third of their week at their place of employment, job satisfaction is directly tied to your quality of life.  It’s so important to have a job that you like and one that allows you to learn and grow. With some help from the management team at First Keystone Community Bank, President and CEO Elaine Woodland developed a series of CONNECT initiatives that would engage our bank’s staff and help us grow as individuals, while connecting with each other, our customers, and our communities.

To kick things off, the bank participated in “CONNECT for Kindness” at the end of 2018. We performed deliberate acts of kindness to our customers, our colleagues, our communities, and even to ourselves. We were hugely successful, with 100% employee participation. As an added benefit, we were even able to provide support to several local food banks during the holiday season.

We followed “CONNECT for Kindness” with “CONNECT for Learning” and spent a few weeks teaching each other about our bank, our departments, and our hobbies and interests. We educated our communities by presenting programs on financial literacy, fraud, and information security to our customers and community groups.  In return, several organizations shared their time and talent to teach us about their mission and goals.

Next on the agenda was “CONNECT for Happiness.” We poured our energy into learning about the science of happiness and made sure to recognize the daily instances where we made each other happy. Our customers even joined in and contributed handwritten notes about how our employees may have helped them and brought a little happiness to their day.

During this past holiday season, we built on Kindness, Learning, and Happiness with another CONNECT initiative. This one was all about GRATITUDE! We looked for ways to express our gratitude for all the important people and wonderful opportunities in our lives. Along the way, we were once again able to reach out and help people and organizations in our community. We followed the simple idea of “something to give, something to do” and collected money and much-needed items for those in need.

But our focus on gratitude didn’t stop there. Here’s a sample of the efforts that our staff did to express their gratitude:

• We visited residents at local nursing homes by visiting residents, caroling, baking and sharing homemade cookies, providing gifts for residents
• We volunteered at local soup kitchens to help feed people who were just looking for their next hot meal
• We sent care packages to our Armed Forces and hosted a free basket raffle at a local Veteran’s Expo
• We visited youth and teen centers to deliver general supplies and food for their evening meals
• We collected hygiene products for the United Way to be distributed at local schools
• We accepted donations at our branches for local food banks, Toys for Tots, animal shelters, Salvation Army, and AGAPE
• We collected hats, mittens, and scarves for a local school district to be given to children who needed winter clothing
• We participated in the United Way Angel Tree program and collected items for local families
• We spent time with kids with autism to bring them some special holiday cheer
• We hosted “Denim Days,” where employees could wear jeans in exchange for monetary donations for food banks in each of our regions
• We even visited numerous business customers to express just how much we appreciate them and to thank them for their business

Throughout this six-week program, we found even more things to be grateful for in our daily lives.  It allowed us to share our blessings with each other and the local community and start a cycle of gratefulness.

Since each CONNECT program had a different focus, we could see changes in different aspects of our lives and in our interactions with others. As a result, the corporate culture and morale at FKCB are higher as we become more mindful of being kind, continuing to learn, sharing happiness, and being grateful.

Overall, by participating in these CONNECT initiatives, we hope to better ourselves, each other and the community. We will be starting a new CONNECT initiative at the end of January, so stay tuned for the next installment!  If you would like to know more about what First Keystone Community Bank does in your community please feel free to contact us at 570-752-3671 (toll free 1-888-759-2266), or follow us on social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or the blog).