This past Wednesday was “Take Our Kids to Work” day in Canada. The program, run by Toronto area non-profit The Learning Partnership, encourages Grade 9 students to go to work with their parents, friends, and relatives. This experience allows our young people to connect with, work alongside, and think about career paths and opportunities that are potentially ahead of them.
This year marked the 20th year of this program. When the program started in 1994, it was a Toronto-based initiative. Since then it’s grown considerably:
- Programs run across every province and territory
- Each year, over 250,000 Grade 9 students participate
- It now involves 75,000 organizations and businesses
Learning about SMEs & Medical Billing
For the first time in JCL’s history, we had a chance to participate in this important and valuable event. Anne Bannon, one of JCL’s team of exceptional Billing Specialists, brought her son James to work on Wednesday. Since this program is intended to educate students about potential career options and the world of business, we talked with James about the importance of smaller businesses in the economy of our province.
Owners of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) have to develop skill sets that span many aspects of the organization – human resources, marketing, sales, accounting. Similarly, employees need to be flexible and work well with colleagues. One of the key benefits of working in an SME is that individuals get to see first hand the impact they have on the success of that business: their contribution is clear and the impact is obvious. After the talk, James learned how JCL works – how our doctors’ work gets to us, what happens when we receive it, how we process claims, etc. He even had time to try his hand at claims processing.
We were thrilled to have James work with us on Wednesday afternoon, and we hope he learned a lot about working in a unique environment like JCL Medical Systems. It was a great experience to join the growing list of businesses and organizations that support and take part in Take Our Kids to Work Day.