The first mission statement I wrote for ComputerCare was forgettable. It was on the home page of our payroll and benefits platform, the very first thing an employee would see when they logged on. I doubt any of our employees remembered it, let alone used it to understand our direction. It was long, uninspired and uninspiring, but more importantly, it had nothing to do with our true purpose as a business.
A few months back, a friend asked me, “What excites you most about the idea of growing your business from 100 to 1,000 employees?” Without pause I responded, “That I would get to have a positive impact on the lives of 1,000 people, instead of just impacting 100.” To accomplish that, ComputerCare would need to grow our customer base and find new revenue streams, but my focus wasn’t about the product we were selling, it was about the people who will get us there.
The last 12 months brought some changes at ComputerCare, as there have been at most companies that survived the pandemic. We adapted, we evolved, and we grew as a company. It also brought me a deeper understanding of gratitude, a new perspective of what success means, and a sense of purpose that extends beyond ComputerCare’s bottom line. Of course, we need to be profitable enough to make payroll, and to cover our insurance premiums, but now, I am even more dedicated to growing a company that recognizes and values the human capital it takes to get there. And so, our new company mission, which I now realize has been there all along, came into focus.
In many ways we were already living our mission statement, even before it became official. In April we raised our minimum wage to $23/hr, and by June adjusted our technician wages by up to 15% to properly reflect the market value of their skill sets. I knew we encouraged a unique and diverse workforce, but it wasn’t until launching our helpdesk service, that we discovered 12 languages were spoken within the company, and we could provide support to our customers in all of them.
I don’t know what ComputerCare will look like in 10 years, but I do know who we’ll be. We’ll be a company that emphasizes our humanity and individuality in the decisions and actions that drive our company forward. We’ll be a company that recognizes the positive impact we can have in people’s lives. We’ll be a company in which each one of us plays a part in how we get there.
