You know who you know. Then there’s everyone else.
So whatever business you’re in (and subject to privacy laws), building an alumni page on your website that keeps current or former employees up to date on where everyone is, and what they’re doing, as well as holding the occasional reunion or get-together for special occasions, tells the world that this isn’t just a great place to work. It’s also a great place to have worked, when the time comes to move on, as almost everyone inevitably does a few times in their careers.
Few businesses that I’m aware of have more dedicated alumni than The Keg Steakhouse & Bar. I worked at the Victoria Keg while doing my law degree in the early 1980s and speak from firsthand experience, even though it's been 27 years since I served my last steak there.
The first Keg opened in 1971 in North Vancouver. The Fort Street Keg in Victoria opened in 1972 and is the only original Keg left from those days.
To celebrate 40 years of the Keg’s founding (and I suppose 39 years in downtown Victoria), I received a notification last week that they’re having a reunion in September for all former employees of the Victoria Keg over the years. They’re closing down the entire restaurant that night for the event.
The alumni from The Keg are, in many ways, a "who’s who” of successful people in Canada. I know two judges, five lawyers, one doctor, two marketing executives, four realtors, an Air Canada pilot, a dozen business people, a successful civic politician, many school and college teachers, the president of a large international restaurant chain, and at least one news anchorwoman- and that’s just from the Keg I worked at during the early eighties. I’m sure it’s the same throughout Canada at other Kegs.
If the Keg needs “goodwill ambassadors” to promote its Keg Spirit Foundation (which donates to other organizations such as Big Brothers Big Sisters, Free the Children, and other worthy organizations), it has close to 200,000 former employees to represent it at the get-go.
If it wants to start a special fundraising drive for the Keg Spirit Foundation - say, to raise money for a school in Africa - it can start with those 200,000 or so Keggers like me who used to work there, but who moved on to other things when they left (like the rest of our lives).
I’d expect the Victoria Keg will seize the opportunity and create a master e-mail list of all alumni, so that former employees could be contacted from time to time to support the Keg Spirit Foundation (and to alert them about other activities or restaurant promotions).
I’d also expect those of us who will be at the reunion will be more than happy to donate gobs of money to the foundation just for being there, even though, like me, our serving days are long over.
Why not try to instill that kind of spirit in your current employees for the time they move on, and in your own alumni? If colleges and universities can do it with their alumni to raise money for scholarships and bursaries, there’s no reason why businesses can’t do it with their alumni as well.
Special to The Globe and Mail
Tony Wilson is a franchise and intellectual property lawyer at Boughton in Vancouver, and he is an adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University. His newest book, Manage Your Online Reputation, was published in November.
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