JK Harris employees give the gift of life during crucial summer months

Last Wednesday, JK Harris and Company held a blood drive for the American Red Cross and I am proud to say we came through when they needed us. You see, one of our employees, a nursing student, asked if we could do a company wide blood drive. So, we contacted the Red Cross a few months ago. They asked us if we could host a blood drive during the critical summer months when donations are typically down. Our communications department sent out an interest survey and we received great feedback from our employees, many of them saying they had hoped we would do this as a company.

I am proud to say, we had 69 employees come out to donate in a six-hour time frame, many more than the Red Cross was expecting of us on our first blood drive. While not all of these employees ended up being eligible to donate – we had a total of 44 donors -, and of these, 23 employees were first-time blood donors. This was a very impressive number and I was excited to see JK Harris employees once again turning out in support of an important cause.

It never ceases to amaze me that whenever the call is made for people in need, our employees always answer it in resounding fashion!

JK Harris settles in after move to new Goose Creek home

This past Fourth of July weekend, JK Harris moved into its new corporate headquarters in Goose Creek, S.C. Goose Creek is a growing community and is about a 30-minute drive from historic Charleston, S.C. This is an exciting time for us as we have unpacked and settled into our new facility.

You may ask, why did we move? This move made sense for our company for a number of reasons. Financially, it is a cost-savings opportunity. We were able to obtain more square footage at a better rate, which benefits our employees as well as our clients. Our company has grown significantly over the years and we outgrew our former facility. We now have the convenience of having our Tax Resolution, Small Business Services and Financial Planning divisions all under one roof. Not only will our employees be more comfortable, we can also better focus our resources on our clients.

Our new building is much better equipped to handle the seasonal thunderstorms, tropical storms and hurricanes we may endure. This building is a “semi-hardened” facility in that it has an uninterrupted power supply and a generator, which will help protect our data and keep our facility operational through storms. The generator also will help us recover more quickly from stronger storms.

We will be adding photos of our new facilities to our company’s Flickr account in the next few weeks. You can view them at www.flickr.com/photos/jkharris. You can also find out more from the Goose Creek Gazette.