Fiducial | We help your business grow and be profitable.

by Stephen Parezo

Participating in last week’s National Take Your Child to Work Day at Fiducial were, from left, Latrina Williams, Erin Wilson, Shavon Payne and Kalani Williams.

May 1, 2006—In observance of National Take Your Child to Work Day last week, Fiducial played host to several eager youngsters at its Technical and Administrative Support Center in Columbia, MD. Though the kids were excused from attending school that day, they did learn some lessons about the business world.

Participating in the day-long event were Kalani Williams, daughter of Shavon Payne, an administrative assistant in purchasing, and Erin Wilson, son of Latrina Williams, a Call Center Representative.

“We’re going to teach you more about what your parents do,” said Angela Winterling, Fiducial’s corporate recruiter, to the kids. “It’s a chance to learn a lot about the people who work here.”

Asked what they wanted to be when they grow up, third grader Kalani, 9, said she wanted “to be a doctor” while kindergartener Erin, 6, yearned “to be a soldier.”

Bill Morice, director of field operations, was the first of nine Fiducial professionals to describe the duties they perform. He told the youngsters that Fiducial has offices “all over the place but your moms work here at what we call TASC.”

Morice says his job is “to make all these offices work and take care of our clients. It’s part of your parents’ job to help all of our clients. My job is to make sure it all works.”

Kalani wondered how Morice made sure that everybody gets to work. “By using a computer,” he replied.

Enthusiastic investors

Janet Struder, a payroll processor in Fiducial’s Payroll Processing Center (PPC), asked the kids if they received an allowance.

“We sort of do that same thing in the payroll department,” said Struder. “Businesses rely on our department to pay their employees. They call us and rely on us to get paychecks to their employees.”

Struder explained to the visitors that the PPC’s job is to keep the clients happy.

“Everything’s got to add up just right,” she said. Again, the computer plays a key role in meeting those obligations. “We go through a special system created just for Fiducial,” she added.

Karen Beech, head of financial services, grabbed the kids’ attention by describing how investments are made by using real money. For example, she gave each of the students a quarter and asked them if they would like to buy some Walt Disney Company stock with it. Both Kalani and Erin quickly agreed to invest their coins while their mothers decided to hold onto theirs.

Under the scenario Beech tells the kids that a year later their quarter investment has now grown so she handed them each a $1 bill.

“Your money has actually increased,” she said. “Why? Because you invested it and that’s how investing will work.”

Beech then wanted to know if the savvy investors wanted to save their $1 or spend it. The response was a unanimous “spend it!”

Lessons learned

So what did the kids learn about Fiducial?

Erin said he learned all about the “different jobs” where “people take care of people and find ways to help people.” What was the most fun for him during the visit? “Playing I declare war [card game],” he said.

Kalani found out that the company “has a lot of ways to help people when they need money for important things.” What did she like best? “I helped my mom put things into the envelopes and doing the [company] tour.”

She was also looking forward to telling her classmates about her day away from school.

“We learned about what Fiducial does and I’ll tell my teacher about it,” she said.

Stephen Parezo is the Media Manager for Fiducial.

Whatever your small business needs, your Fiducial tax and financial professional can analyze your situation and recommend an appropriate action plan. To locate a Fiducial office nearest you on fiducial.com, see the Zip Code Locator located in the upper right hand corner of the page. Do you have a particular topic that we should be writing about that can help your business? Please send your suggestions to: stephen.parezo@fiducial.com.

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