Empowering Through Initiatives: Covia’s Commitment to Veterans

Covia strives to build a welcoming environment where Team Members with unique backgrounds and experiences feel comfortable, safe, and encouraged.

Recently, Covia Team Members led an initiative to build a support network for veterans of the United States military. Their goal is to build a volunteer-led support network to connect veterans at Covia, as well as assist in career development and community engagement. Let’s take a closer look at the veteran support network and how Covia is taking steps to build a welcoming environment for veterans.

Establishing a Veterans Network

When military service members transition to the civilian workforce, they often miss the camaraderie and closeness of the military culture. To help combat that, Covia Team Members have created a veteran support network. The Veterans Network helps veterans feel more connected while also giving them a community where they can grow their careers, share their experiences, give back, and grow as leaders.

The project is championed by Covia Team Member and US Army veteran Joe Migyanko, as a way to advocate veteran voices in the organization.

The Veterans Network at Covia features four main pillars:

• Recognition – to improve the recognition of veterans at Covia.
• Engagement – to increase the level of employee engagement with military and veteran activities in the community.
• Reputation – to highlight Covia’s Team Members as members of the veteran community.
• Recruiting – to encourage more veterans to seek out employment at Covia.

Covia veterans who participated in the kickoff meeting for the Veterans Network were enthusiastic about the group's goals and potential and shared some of the ways their military experiences have shaped them.

Covia’s Veteran Initiatives

The Veterans Network is supported by Team Members throughout the organization, including Covia leaders. While the efforts are being led by the veterans, Covia is taking steps to encourage, support, and expand their efforts.

Covia is continuing to work on building a holistic environment that empowers veterans and encourages their career growth. We believe it is critical to foster and support a proud community for members to connect while building our programs for veteran recruitment efforts, career development, outward engagement, and professional growth and retention.

To push this initiative forward, Covia is hosting ongoing meetings to help the growing collective of veterans establish resources, roles, and responsibilities needed for the group’s success. This includes building a council of veterans to lead and champion the priorities of the Veterans Network.

Many of our Team Members actively support veterans’ organizations in their communities. At the company level, Covia also engages with the veteran community through an annual golf outing. We hosted our 9^th annual Stars, Stripes & Links golf outing this past October to support and engage with veterans in the greater Cleveland community. This unique event provided a day of golf specifically intended for injured combat veterans and gave Covia the opportunity to show our immense gratitude for their service and sacrifices.

This year, we hosted more than 30 veterans, representing all five branches of the military. They enjoyed a morning of camaraderie and one-on-one golf instruction, followed by on-course team play and a lunch reception to conclude the event.

We look forward to the further development of the Veterans Network at Covia, as well as new opportunities to continue building a welcoming workspace where every Team Member can prosper and grow.

Building a Community for All

Empowering all Team Members to perform at their best while being themselves is fundamental to the Covia Values and Culture. Covia is proud to honor veterans both inside and outside of the organization. We are deeply committed to further building out our veteran initiatives and continuing to support the veterans in our communities.

“I’ve been with Covia for about 22 years, and I’ve met and worked with great people. The camaraderie you feel when you’re working together for a purpose is special, and once you’ve experienced it, you know how important it is.” - Joe Migyanko, Covia Team Member and US Military veteran.

Learn more about Joe and Covia’s Veterans Network.