Mercer colleagues make a difference in their communities through the Mercer Cares BRG, which harnesses our people’s passion for making a meaningful impact in their communities through volunteering.
We are advocates for corporate social responsibility not just in the way we do business, but also in our commitment to helping our communities. Mercer Cares is a signature global program that supports and encourages colleague-driven volunteering in the communities where we live and work.
“Mercer Cares is successful because of teamwork. I’m grateful to work with a team of gifted, compassionate and dedicated people from all levels in the organization who are eager to serve their communities and promote human kindness.” — Mercer Cares Chapter Co-Leader, Chicago
Each May, as a way to increase the impact of our year-round volunteering programme, Mercer Cares partners with our colleagues, our clients and our nonprofit partners to make a positive difference in our communities by volunteering together. In 2016, more than 1,900 Mercer colleagues in 110 cities around the world used their talents, time and passion to contribute 14,400 hours of service to the causes they care about. Download the full infographic to learn more about Global Volunteer Month.
Mercer Portugal helps rebuild a small village.
During the 2015 Global Volunteer Month, 109 Mercer colleagues in Portugal spent a day rehabilitating and renovating buildings in the small village of Canha, south of Lisbon, Portugal. Together with other volunteers from Marsh McLennan, they contributed over 1,000 volunteer hours.
Teams of colleagues joined Canha’s local authorities to restore and renovate the local church, public gardens, primary school, kindergarten, a small museum, and the local community house, where elderly people in the village meet to relax and socialise.
This initiative was very important because Mercer helped improve the community’s quality of living and local infrastructures. It was also an extraordinary experience for us. It is incredible to see what we learn when we have the opportunity to interact with the local population.” — Diogo Alarcão, CEO of Mercer Portugal
It all begins with inspiring teachers.
When Mercer undertook a project to strengthen the talent framework that underpins the special education (SPED) ecosystem in Singapore in order to provide quality education to students with moderate to severe special educational needs (SEN), little did we realise the value that this project would create.
The initiative, which saw Mercer’s consultants engaging with more than 70% of SPED teachers in Singapore as well as Social Service Agencies (SSAs) and a government department), didn’t just provide outputs such as a new SPED teacher career framework, role profiles, and a skills framework with a training roadmap: it changed the perceptions and touched the hearts of everyone involved.
Project and professional goals that align which personal passions
The project’s aim was clear: to create a new teacher career framework and role profile, a skills framework and a training roadmap. However, in the process of creating these frameworks, Mercer’s consultants also discovered a lot of things they hadn’t expected: humility, passion and pride. Yes, lives were changed, but not just the lives of the educators the project was designed to serve. Interviewing over 19 SPED schools, 21 Principals and Vice Principals and surveying more than 1,000 SPED teachers gave Mercer deep insights into the challenges facing special needs educators. More importantly, the outputs of this research helped drive sector-wide behavioural change and support government initiatives to improve special education across Singapore. It also humbled and inspired Mercer’s consultants.
Watch this video which tells the wonderful story of how the project has impacted the lives of our colleagues, and those in the community.
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