So here’s how it all started. Last June, we held an event in Spokane to encourage veterans and other people to apply for jobs in a new call center we planned to open in the area. (Click here for an example of the news coverage) Recruiters were working hard to identify great job candidates.If you fast forward to today, there are 450 people who now work in the Spokane Comcast Center of Excellence in Spokane Valley. They are on the front lines of Comcast’s efforts to make customer service our best product. It seemed reasonable to me to ask: Did it work? Do we have any members of the military community who work there now?
And that line of thought led to an event yesterday in Spokane. More than one in eight employees at the new center is a member of the military community: a veteran, a member of the National Guard or Reserves, or a military spouse. Yesterday’s event was complex, because it was designed to do many things:
- We wanted to honor more than 50 military community employees in Spokane, plus acknowledge another 30 who work in our field office there.
- We wanted to inaugurate #VetNet, an employee resources group that supports veterans and other members of the military community.
- We wanted to make the latest donation we’ve made to nonprofits in Spokane, in this case, Operation Spokane Heroes, a group that supports needy military families.
- We wanted to host and welcome Carol Eggert, a retired brigadier general who is the relatively new Comcast Vice President for Military and Veteran Affairs.
- We wanted to ask members of the community such as employment counselors for their collaboration to help us identify good job candidates for even more jobs we’re opening up in Spokane.
- And we wanted to sign the Employer Support of Guard and Reserve (ESGR) document.
That last one deserves explanation. The ESGR document represents an agreement with the Department of Defense pledging that Comcast in Washington will be a good employer for members of the National Guard and Reserves. Members of both groups who are employees were present for the signing, which was conducted by Gen. Eggert under the supervision of several volunteers for ESGR as well as one of our distinguished VIP visitors, Colonel Daniel Swain, commander of the 141st Air Refueling Wing, Washington Air National Guard located at nearby Fairchild Air Force Base. The document was signed by Kyle McSlarrow, Comcast’s Regional Senior Vice President in Washington.
As you can see from the video above and the photos below, the event was a great celebration. Here’s the bottom line. We expect to have hundreds more people working in Spokane when the permanent location of the call center opens this summer in Liberty Lake. We’d like to hire many more members of the military community. Here’s the link to share if you know of someone seeking employment in the area: http://cmcsa.jobs/SpokaneWA
I’m really excited to see how many members of the military community will be working with us by next summer!
Here are two stories that tell more about the big day: a report of our tour of Fairchild Air Force Base and a story about the importance of ESGR.
Here are some photos of the big day. You’ll find the whole Flickr album of photos, taken by Young Kwak, here.
