While we knew that we had a significant population of Veterans in the USA, our HR systems data showed only a small percentage of Veterans on record. 

Our newly formed Veterans Employee Resource Network kicked off their activities honoring Veterans Day in the USA by recognizing the military service of employees. The Network core team worked with the Human Resources and Operations teams to identify employees who had previously served, or who were currently serving in the military in some capacity through online surveys, team calls and one-one-one interviews. Once the core team felt comfortable with the list of recognized Veterans, the team worked to design a challenge coin to present to Veteran employees. The history of the challenge coin is a long-standing military tradition of recognition that the Veterans Network adopted to design a company-branded coin to present to every Veteran employee at simultaneous events across more than 50 site locations in the USA. Employees were gathered together by site leaders or managers who spoke to broader groups about honoring the service and sacrifice of military Veterans, as well as highlighting some of the unique skills that Veterans bring to the workplace including team building, leadership, positive work ethics, and much more. 

By conducting our extensive exercises to identify our Veterans across the USA, we were able to more than double our identified employees and recognize their contributions to our business each and every day. The collection of events became the largest employee-led recognition activity for the company and led to creating our largest Employee Resource Network membership.