Timberland Celebrates Service Driven Employees

Apr 13, 2016 12:00 PM ET
Timberland’s Path of Service™ program offers full-time employees up to 40 paid community service hours. Employees who serve all of their available hours in a year earn membership in Timberland’s 40’s Club. Several 40’s Club members at Timberland’s headquarters in Stratham N.H. hold up mugs and certificates received at a recent 40’s Club recognition event.

At Timberland, there is a strong sense of pride among employees for the company’s established heritage of environmental and social justice, which is rooted in a long-standing commitment to service. This dedication to service is still alive today. President Stewart Whitney and the Timberland community recently celebrated a group of its employees at a special event recognizing the group’s outstanding commitment to service with an induction into the company’s “40’s Club” program. The program, which was conceived to infuse volunteerism into the company’s DNA and culture, honors employees who serve all of their 40 paid community service hours each year.

Service has been a way of life at Timberland since 1992, when the company started its Path of Service™ program to motivate all employees to embrace service, not just the sustainability or corporate responsibility teams. “Employees are proud of their club membership and it’s like a badge of honor,” said Atlanta McIlwraith, Senior Manager of Community Engagement and Communication. “If you walk around our global headquarters building you’ll see certificates and pins from every year displayed in employee’s work spaces. People challenge each other to get into the club each year and our membership numbers are growing.” In 2014, Timberland employees volunteered over 72,000 hours and 77 employees at Timberland’s global headquarters served all 40 of their available hours. These employees represented 18 percent of employees at that location. Since the program began, Timberland employees have volunteered more than one million hours of community service around the globe.