When we achieve success or hit a major milestone at SkyWater Search Partners, we know who got us there: our team members. To celebrate our tenth anniversary as an organization, we wanted to say Thank You to the three extraordinary leaders who have been with us since the very beginning with a gift that was unforgettable, experiential, and completely designed by each recipient:
This month, SkyWater Search Partners celebrated our tenth annual “Walk a Mile for a Smile” event in support of Smile Network International, one of our favorite international charitable organizations.
At SkyWater Search Partners, we believe that vibrant communities are built through strong community partnerships. Each quarter, we honor a top-performing team member with the gift of a substantial financial donation, in their name, to a nonprofit organization of their choosing.
Pride Month is a time to celebrate love, diversity, the progress made within the LGBTQ community, and the countless, often unnamed heroes that have brought about that progress. At the center of these celebrations is the Pride Flag, a global symbol of the pride, inclusion, and unity that all members of the community deserve to experience.
SkyWater Search Partners is honored to be recognized by Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journals (MSPBJ) as a 2024 Best Place to Work. This is the 9th time we have received this distinction. As always, we are delighted to see our continuous investments in talent and our commitment to our values validated so powerfully and publicly.
During this Black History Month, I hope you and your team have enjoyed immersing yourselves in some of the celebrations available to us all this February. As we approach the end of the month, it feels like the right time to step back and reflect on how we can take the lessons of Black History and use them to do better as employers and community members. What can we do to advance the ideals of diversity, equity, and inclusion? How do we ensure they reverberate for our teams and shape our efforts going forward? At their core, these ideals are not only about becoming wiser, more inclusive human beings in our personal lives. They're also a rallying cry, encouraging us to reconsider the systems, practices, and structures that continue to get in the way of achieving diversity and equity in the workplace.
Here are some things we're learning along the way that are important for all employers to remember as we continue on our journey.
Since it was first introduced on NBC's sitcom Parks and Recreation, Galentine’s Day has become a real thing, embraced around the world as a day for women to celebrate and support each other. For me, it’s also become a day of revisiting some very real leadership lessons shared by the show’s iconic lead character, Leslie Knope.
For many of us, the word “Thanksgiving” can conjure up some brief, highly idealized images in our heads. There is a glorious table, spread with perfectly prepared foods and staged with china and crystal so shiny that they reflect the equally perfect glow of perfectly placed candles.
For ten years, SkyWater Search Partners has been dedicated to supporting the communities where we work and live. That core value led to the creation of our Employee of the Quarter award. Each quarter, we honor a top-performing team member with a financial donation, in their name, to a nonprofit organization of their choosing. We are delighted that this quarter’s winner chose to highlight the extraordinary work of the Susan G. Komen Foundation.
In his classic 1974 book, Working, Studs Terkel interviews Americans about “what they do all day and how they feel about what they do.” It covers a broad swath of 1970s jobs, from farming the land, to coaching a football team, to being a comedian. In some ways, the book now reads like a peek into a time capsule; we don’t have switchboards or their operators anymore. But at its core, the book is timeless – and more timely – than ever.
