Like most folks, there’s a good chance you spent your Labor Day enjoying the waning days of summer. Perhaps you enjoyed a cookout with family and friends. Maybe you spent one last day at the pool. You might even have had the good fortune to head out of town for a long weekend.

Of course, lots of people had to work on Labor Day so the rest of us could enjoy the day off. But a few actually volunteered to work to do something to help their community.

So it was for five hair stylists at Cut N’ Shears hair salon on Burnetts Way. On Sunday and Monday, those five stylists spent their normal days off cutting the hair of 150 children who could not afford back-to-school haircuts.

Recognizing the fact that sometimes children get teased at school for such simple things as wearing last year’s fashions or last year’s hair styles, the folks at Cut N’ Shears decided a few years ago that they could do something to make a difference. Giving free haircuts to those who could not afford to pay for their own would relieve at least one of the potential catalysts for such bullying, they concluded.

Working with the Suffolk Police Department, the salon gave its visitors on Sunday and Monday free breakfast, free haircuts and free bags of school supplies.

“(It’s) truly a labor of love for the community,” said SPD Sgt. Cheryl Balzer. “They’re a business that wants to be part of the community.”

Every Suffolk business can take a lesson from those words and from the actions they describe. Simple charitable acts such as giving free haircuts will surely not change everything for those who are less fortunate. But small acts can have bigger consequences, and many small acts together can bring big change.

What can your business do to make a difference? In light of the example set by a little hair salon on Labor Day, that’s a question every company in Suffolk should be asking itself this week.