Hiring veterans is a no-brainer. In the service, they’ll no doubt have learned multiple invaluable disciplines that have 1:1 translation to the civilian working world. Anyone who doubts that should sit down with Meg Hendricks at Fiserv to be schooled.
“I would expect someone who served in the military to be able to manage projects really well,” says Hendricks, Vice President of Corporate Citizenship for the financial services company, and a veteran herself. “We’re good at completing tasks to time and standard. We’re very good with time efficiency. And if you’re looking for someone to bring on your team who can create strong standard operating procedures, we’re usually pretty good at that too. Most everyone who’s been in the military will have some level of leadership; there are some who have led groups of 10 to hundreds or even thousands of people.”
“That requires them to have some level of engagement, and the ability to manage people, money and equipment. In the service we say ‘You can’t quit when you’re in.’ When you get assigned to a certain group or department, you have to make it work with those people who are there. The expectation is that you go in there, you work, and you figure it out,” she says, describing pretty much anyone’s dream work ethic.
Beginnings
Hendricks was in ROTC during her education in Colorado Springs, and she was commissioned as a second lieutenant straight out of school.
“I was an adjutant general. So basically, that’s the Human Resources Officer. I served for five years and transitioned out in 2012,” she says.
While serving, she took the time to get a master’s degree in industrial organizational psychology. While waiting for her husband to finish his active duty service, Hendricks earned a Professional Human Resources (PHR) certification. Hendricks’s first job out of the military was as a training & organizational development specialist for a specialty chemical company. She eventually was hired on by a firm called First Data, which is now Fiserv, as part of a military program.
“I got to come on board and started out working in university engagement. Then that quickly kind of snowballed, and I got the opportunity to enhance and expand the programs that I was working on,” Hendricks says. “Then, our Corporate Citizenship department was born out of our military and veteran affairs team, and I had the opportunity to manage all of the employee resource group (ERG) programs.”
Hendricks left Fiserv briefly for a stint as a military recruiter for ADP, but then returned to Fiserv in March of 2020.
As for what it was about Fiserv that brought her back, she says it’s the fact that the company walks the walk in terms of its culture.
“Even though I worked on the military team before, I was really excited about getting an opportunity to lead all the different programs and projects related to it,” she says, admitting that “it was a little disappointing, obviously, for many reasons when COVID happened right after I got here the second time, because one of the things I was most excited about was being able to travel and getting to be around the different people who are working in this space. But we shifted to a lot of virtual programming, so that was another exciting learning opportunity. And now that we are slowly starting to travel again, I’m getting to engage with others who are working to make an impact in the military employment, engagement and entrepreneurship space.”
Military Engagement
“We have what we call our Fiserv Salutes engagement strategy, and that’s a U.S. military engagement strategy where we provide career opportunities, educational resources and business solutions to the military community,” Hendricks says, adding that there are three pillars used by all the company’s ERGs. They are:
- Employment – “We partner with Step It Up America, Hiring our Heroes, RecruitMilitary, and other organizations in order to seek out qualified military-affiliated candidates to bring onboard at Fiserv.”
- Engagement – “When we look to engage our associates, we offer a variety of different training, development and learning programs. Especially in a large corporation, I think it’s important to network, as much as some people might hate to hear that all the time,” Hendricks says. “But networking is hugely important for your professional development. So that’s a lot of what we try to do with the ERGs. We look to them to be a force multiplier when it comes to all of our programming.”
- Entrepreneurship – “Many of the partnerships we engage with are related to entrepreneurship, which is really wonderful.”
The department Hendricks oversees fits within the overall Corporate Citizenship strategy and sets the tone at the national level for who Fiserv partners with in the military community.
“We really look for how we can engage at the local level,” she explains. “For example, we have a national partnership with Bunker Labs, but last year we engaged a lot in the Atlanta area. And we’re looking to expand that a little bit more so our Military Leadership Council (MLC) becomes even more deeply engaged in the community. Last year, a lot of our programming was virtual, obviously, but this year we will have Fiserv ERG representatives volunteer at local events in several locations to ensure we are well represented.”
Current Fiserv President and CEO Frank Bisignano – who is not a veteran himself but was deeply impacted by the service of his family members – introduced a preliminary version of Fiserv Salutes as one of his first initiatives when he became CEO at First Data. Bisignano recruited Hendricks’ mentor and manager, Vivian Greentree, to build out the team that eventually became Fiserv Salutes.
“We believe that hiring qualified veterans and helping veterans grow their business isn’t just the right thing to do. It’s also good business.”
Partnerships
Among current partnerships for Fiserv Salutes:
The Institute for Veterans and Military Families: “This is one of our primary partnerships, and our main focus is partnering with them on entrepreneurship. Additionally, we point people toward their Onward to Opportunity programs if they are looking for employment or assistance transitioning to the civilian workforce.”
“We are one of the founding members of the Coalition for Veteran Owned Businesses.”
“We are a returning primary sponsor for the Veteran EDGE Conference. The purpose of that conference is to have small veteran and military spouse-owned businesses get access to and learn from larger Fortune 500 companies who are also partners.”
Dog Tag Bakery: “They’re not just a bakery that makes delicious treats; they have an entrepreneurship incubator in D.C., and they just expanded to Chicago. They’ve also partnered with Veteran Roasters, a coffee company that helps employ homeless veterans. You can get a box that has cookies and coffee in it, which we sent to our MLC chapter leaders last year.”
“We partner with Operation Gratitude to host an annual Operation Honor Card campaign, now in its eighth year. Employees across the U.S. write letters to veterans and those who are deployed, as well as first responders, healthcare workers, and caregivers.”
As for the future, Hendricks says the group is planning on some major brainstorming to determine how Fiserv Salutes can have the greatest impact over the next five years.
“As the world begins to slowly return to pre-COVID conditions, we will be looking at ways to enhance our recruitment and engage more at the local level. We want to focus on nurturing and deepening the relationships that we currently have to enhance that connection and create an even greater impact, either at the national level or at a local or regional level,” she says.
Asked about one of the Fiserv Salutes programs of which she is most proud, Hendricks mentions the company’s expansive military leave policy: “Other large companies have used our approach as the basis for theirs. If you serve in the Guard or Reserves, you receive 100 percent of your pay for up to two years while you’re on active duty.”
Fiserv also offers gender neutral paid parental leave, educational reimbursement, a variety of different training resources and other expansive benefits.
Referencing advice for veterans, Hendricks said, “My best advice for ex-military candidates who may feel like their experience doesn’t necessarily quite fit with some of the jobs that are available is to check out our Rotational Analyst program. The program is for those who have been in the service less than a decade and have no or limited experience in the civilian professional sector. You get to rotate between a few different departments within a certain track over the course of two years. It lets you get your foot in the door, and then you can go from there.”
She also recommends that those still serving in the military participate in the Hiring Our Heroes corporate fellowship program or Skillsbridge, which afford participants the opportunity to come to Fiserv – among other companies – and check it out before getting out of the military. Those in the program have a chance to convert into a full-time role after they transition out of active duty.
Of her own journey with Fiserv, Hendricks shares, “More than half of my time in the civilian sector has been spent here at Fiserv. And so it matters a lot to me, and I enjoy the work that I’m doing. I think something that’s interesting and we talk about a lot in this community is that there are so many veterans that if we treated our group like an alumni network, we would have so many more opportunities. And the opportunity for me to create some of those connections is something that is truly special. It makes me happy that I get to do that as part of my job every day.”