Development Day was held at a 73,000-square-foot building that is the planned new home of VCCU's headquarters and operations center.

"Because we just closed escrow about eight weeks ago on the building we purchased for our corporate facility, many employees had not seen it." Rossi said. "So, we gave tours of the building at the beginning of the day. Plus, we had a 'Name the Domain' contest that provided a fun forum for formalizing the name of the facility, which will be announced at a later date."

Rossi and other leaders at VCCU said Development Day has offered the opportunity to invest in the credit union's most important asset – its team.

"Our senior management presented the idea of a staff training day to our board of directors, and we felt it was a great way to keep the employee engaged, informed and up to date with all that was going on in our credit union, the credit union movement and our community," Roxy Ostrem, VCCU board chair, said.

"It is important that our employees or team members feel that they are a huge part of this organization," she stressed. "Without them, we would not be Ventura County Credit Union."

Feeling valued, confident, inspired, enthused and empowered are the key emotions that lead to employee engagement, according to a 2012 white paper titled "Emotional Drivers of Employee Engagement" published by Dale Carnegie Training.

Being valued is the gateway to achievement, but the feeling of being valued was reported by only 46% of 1,500 U.S. employees who participated in a 2012 study by MSW Research.

"Feeling valued and feeling confident together empower people to make decisions about their work and generates enthusiasm, which inspires people to try harder," the study said.

Employees who are excited and enthusiastic to be at work are not just there for the paycheck or the next promotion care about the organization and work to further its goals, according to the MSW Research study.

Read more: Development Day details …

During this year's VCCU Development Day, employees received branded backpacks with a t-shirt, program materials and other items. The investment, which including paying for food, collateral materials, audio and video equipment and the keynote speaker, was about $65 per person, she said. Of VCCU's 170 fulltime employees, 163 attended the event, Rossi said.

Guest speakers included Clayton Vetter, a UCLA trainer who discussed understanding and communicating across generations, and Lucy Ito, outgoing EVP and COO of the California/Nevada Credit Union Leagues, who will become the new president/CEO of NASCUS later this year.

VCCU staff members also attended an array of breakout sessions.

"The first breakout provided employees an opportunity to choose one from a list of five sessions that provided professional development," Rossi said. "The professional development sessions were facilitated by internal subject matter experts."

For example, one session called, "Would you like CHIPS with that?" covered the topic of EMV/chip cards, which VCCU is implementing soon, Rossi said.

The second breakout offered information about three sessions aimed at personal development. Employees had the choice of selecting one session on either work-life balance, planning for retirement or disaster preparedness. Those sessions were led by external subject matter experts, such as a local fire marshal and a financial services adviser.

Employees who attended the event reported positive results.

"I really enjoyed networking with other staff members from totally different departments," Stacy Oates, a branch manager with VCCU. "We had time to sit down together, chat and exchange ideas about the credit union and future plans and programs."

Oates said she liked the generational session best because it included information about her generation – the baby boomers.

"Overall, the session opened with communication with the group I manage, which is largely millennial and Gen Y," she said. "It also helped me own up to my own generational characteristics."

During breaks, the credit union provided breakfast, lunch, snacks and team-building activities.

"Our new facility has a soccer-field size front lawn so we even had ice cream freezers, Frisbees and beach balls for games during breaks," Rossi said.

The day concluded with an optional opportunity for employees to volunteer planting trees in downtown Ventura.

"We have a program called CommUNITY Giving that provides our employees 40 hours of work time annually to volunteer in the community," Rossi said. "Because many of our employees say it's challenging to get away from the office, this provided a perfect time to do just that."