Best Buddies Jobs Spotlight: An Employer’s Perspective

Best Buddies Indiana is proud to have TCC as an employment partner with our Jobs program. TCC Director of Human Resources and 2018 Champion of the Year candidate, Kim Miller, shares the impact Best Buddies Jobs participant, RJ has made on their organization.

RJ has been such a blessing to our organization and our team since coming on board with us at TCC. It has truly been a pleasure to see him grow both personally and professionally since joining our team. He has pushed himself outside of many comfort zones in the workplace, which in return has grown his confidence, communication, and friendships with others both within and outside of the workplace. RJ has served as a great representative and advocate in our workplace and community for the Best Buddies organization through the following:

• RJ organized community events to help raise funds for the Champion of the Year event, because he truly cares about making a difference in the lives of others, because he can see the impact that the Best Buddies organization has made on him.
• He single-handedly got all of our auction items for our Champion of the Year event, by reaching out to organizations in the community and simply stepping outside of his comfort zone and communicating the purpose of what these items would be used for and how they would help impact others as he has been impacted.
• RJ also helped develop our #withfriendship slogan that we used throughout our campaign as well on the design of our shirts that displayed a bicycle, which is RJ’s passion outside of work. You frequently see employees wearing those shirts around the office in support of RJ and the Best Buddies program.
• He was super involved in the Champion of the Year campaign and rocked it! I couldn’t have asked for a better coach and friend to have work alongside me during the campaign. We pushed each other during this process and strengthened our friendship through it and we were also competitors meeting consistently to come up with new ways to help raise for funds, because we knew how many others it could bless and impact, just like Best Buddies impacted us, which ultimately, led us to raising over $40,000 dollars in total and a second-place finish. WOW!!! We still smile about this experience, because we know that this competition was more than just winning or a trophy, it was about impacting the lives of others and providing them with friendship opportunities and experiences just like we have been blessed with.
• RJ helped plan a Chili Cook-Off with our team at our Corporate office to help educate others on the Best Buddies organization and raise funds as well. He even judged on who had the best chili in the office. During that day alone in just a little over an hour, we were able to raise over $1,000.
• Also, RJ put himself out there talking about Best Buddies on RTV6 and the Carmel Current. Now, that takes confidence to do, and speaks volumes to how much he has truly grown in that area, because I don’t think about 6 months before that he would have ever gotten on a camera, but he did it because he knows that he has people here at work who are his friends, appreciate him and know how much value he brings to our office. Additionally, he also wanted to share his positive experiences that he has had through the Best Buddies organization and wanted to bring more awareness and help raise more funds as well.
• RJ also participated in the Friendship walk this year and was able to rally other individuals from the TCC organization to participate with him in the walk.
• RJ also helps support other Best Buddies jobs participants by allowing them to come in and job shadow his duties and talk about his experiences as an office employee. The coolest part is that he is confident enough to do this on his own. We are super proud of his desire to want to help others in the program and be a role model for them as well and our business.
• From a work perspective, RJ is helping us with a big initiative of going paperless and has spent many hours scanning in employees’ files to help us with this. This has made our process of gaining access to an employee file more efficient and convenient. Additionally, he has helped keep us on track with the removal of terminated files as well old files and honestly has made our file room look the best it has ever looked. If it wasn’t for him taking this on, we would probably be sitting with boxes up to the ceiling.
• RJ has also been participating in our Culture of Good Days in which we go out and serve other organizations in our community. As a team we are currently serving Horizon House in Downtown Indianapolis, which seeks to meet the needs of the homeless in our community. We have been serving them on a quarterly basis and serving meals, preparing clothes, cleaning, talking with the homeless, etc. during our time there. RJ has been actively participating in serving others in our community through our companies Culture of Good.
• Additionally, he has created a friendly IU and Purdue fan rivalry amongst other friends in the building, which has created a lot of morning laughs and fun pranks and continues to spread amongst the building as something fun and interactive and it brings a lot of smiles!

I think most notably; RJ has one of the most positive attitudes that I have ever encountered. There is not a day that I can think of where he showed up and did not display a good attitude during his workday. Having RJ on our team and part of our business has brought a lot of smiles, laughs and good friendship. He has been able to make a connection with others in the building and maintain genuine friendships inside the workplace as well outside. We couldn’t be prouder of his personal and professional growth in relation to his confidence. We know that this growth will only help him help others in the Best Buddies Program.

Thank you for blessing us with RJ, he is the definition of an ideal employee, humble team member and role model for positivity.