Newhall Land Employees Give Work Time to the Community
Many area companies encourage employees to do volunteer work after hours or on weekends. And, surprisingly in these hard times, some local firms allow employees to volunteer on company time. A notable example is the Newhall Land & Farming Co., which is developing the town of Valencia. Chairman and Chief Executive Thomas Lee, a 23-year Newhall veteran, has been involved in Valencia community organizations including its YMCA, the Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital, the Boys & Girls Club and the Child & Family Development Center. Lee, currently chairman of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, was interviewed by staff writer Jill Bettner.
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Question: Newhall has about 250 employees. How many are actively involved in the community?
Answer: About 50 of our employees are active in various activities here in Valencia.
Q. Why does the company give them time off for those activities during work hours?
A. We don’t really have a written policy about that. But if our volunteers have to take some time out of the work day to go to a meeting of a nonprofit organization or help with a project, we don’t worry about it.
Q. Doesn’t that hurt employee productivity?
A. Everybody here knows they have a job to do, and we leave it up to them pretty much how they get it done. They’re responsible people. If they need to come in the office later for an hour or two, we know they’ll do it.
Q. So that’s how Newhall can afford a fairly uncommon practice?
A. Right, giving employees that kind of flexibility doesn’t cost much. We also contribute money to all these organizations we’re involved in. We consider all of it to be a great investment in the community that just comes back to us many times over.
Q. What exactly are those dividends?
A. Certainly one of our key reasons for supporting volunteer work is that strong community organizations make Valencia a better place. And strong community organizations persuade more people to live here and more businesses to relocate here.
I think volunteerism has also opened up the lines of communication between us and the community. It says there are real people running Newhall and we’re not just some big impersonal company. If somebody hears a rumor or something they can pick up the phone and call somebody they know here or see them at the next Boys & Girls Club meeting.
Q. Anything else?
A. Our ability to be successful in continuing to build the community of Valencia is very much tied to what the community thinks of us. Whether they have confidence in us and respect us for what we’re doing. So for us, being involved in the community is a two-way street--people can clearly see we’re trying to make this a better place to live and work. Second, when you get your employees involved in a variety of activities in the community, you get to know the leaders in that community.
Q. Does community involvement also help appease corporate critics, such as certain environmental groups that have opposed some of Newhall’s development plans in the past?
A. It’s not an effort to appease anybody. It’s an effort to communicate as effectively and straightforwardly as we can with the community.
Q. What do employees say they get out of volunteering?
A. Personal satisfaction, I think that’s really it. It’s enabled me personally to meet a lot of wonderful people in the community that maybe I wouldn’t have gotten to know otherwise. There are lots of ways people seek and obtain gratification in their lives--through their families, through religious pursuits, through work. A fourth way is to be involved in these organizations.
Q. Have any community-service programs been especially popular with employees?
A. A program called Business Buddies has been very popular. It’s a really neat program with Helmers Elementary and Meadows Elementary in Valencia where about a dozen employees adopt a classroom and help the teacher any way they can. Somebody in our computer department might help the teacher set up computers, for example. Another employee might go read to the kids every couple of weeks or give a talk on what kind of education they would need to do different kinds of jobs we have at Newhall.
Q. Do employees ever get over-involved in volunteer projects, to the extent that their work suffers?
A. That hasn’t been a serious issue. Over the last 10 years, it’s happened twice where I’ve felt somebody was doing so much in the community that it was interfering with their work. I’ve sat down with them, discussed what their personal goals were in life and gotten them back on track. I don’t think we’ve ever lost somebody because of it.
Q. Does Newhall have any rules about which organizations are acceptable if employee-volunteers expect any company time off ?
A. Generally, our policy is that an organization be nonprofit. We steer away from political and religious groups and look for groups that have generated strong support from others in the community. We don’t want to be the only one in the community supporting something. We want to get involved because the community thinks it’s important.
Q. How important do you think corporate volunteers are to most charities?
A. Critical. They all need help. They’re always underfunded, always need staff. They all desperately need volunteer support. You can tell when you do any little thing for them. It’s great. You can just feel you’re making a difference.
Q. Does Newhall have a special obligation to Valencia because it is building the town as a master-planned community?
A. Absolutely, and that has always been our concept. When you’re developing a community, you’re doing a lot more than building homes, industrial buildings and office parks. Those are the physical parts of a community, but you’re also developing the social parts as well. We have a lot of people coming in here, they’re house-poor, both working. They don’t necessarily have time to get involved in nonprofit organizations to the same degree as you might find in a more established community. So, we’ve really put some effort into getting things like that started here ourselves.
Q. Did the company focus on establishing any particular community organizations?
A. Going back at least 20 years, there have been four big things we’ve been involved in getting here. One was California Institute of the Arts, where we contributed half of the land as enticement for them to come here.
Another was College of the Canyons, and we did the equivalent thing there, selling the land for half its appraised value. The third thing was Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital, for which we also contributed the land. The Newhall family foundation and individual family members contributed the initial equity so the hospital could sell bonds to raise the balance of the funds it needed.
