Working with folks who care

Andreas Graf, 36, is a factory worker in Germany. Over a year ago, his wife died, and his three-year-old son Julius has been fighting a potentially fatal disease. Graf used all his vacation time to stay with Julius in the hospital, but it finally ran out. Unless he went back to work, he'd lose his job.

But then his company's Human Resources manager talked to his co-workers, and they came up with a plan to save his job by donating their own overtime pay. The factory has about 650 employees. Every single one of them offered to help. Collectively, they donated 3,265 hours, or about 18 months of time. The firm is letting Graf take it all as paid time off. Now his son is doing better. The boy turned five last month and should be well enough to go to pre-school soon.