Turn Your Credit Union Into a Career-Building Destination

One thing credit unions are never short on is competition. From large brick and mortar banks to the rise of online-only banking institutions, competition is everywhere.

Credit unions, along with other financial institutions, are in a war for talent in a tight labor market. In April 2019, the unemployment rate dropped to 3.6, the lowest rate in nearly 50 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

So how can credit unions stand out and differentiate themselves from the competition? They can foster employee engagement and create a positive culture where employees are able to thrive and want to stay.

Good culture and engagement aren’t just born though – they’re thoughtfully created and designed.

George Hofheimer, EVP, chief research and development officer at the Filene Research Institute, said it starts with core values or collective beliefs, and then an understanding how those core beliefs guide behavior within an organization.

Engagement Strategy

When you know your core beliefs, you have the foundation for an engagement strategy. The $1.2 billion Unitus Community Credit Union in Portland, Ore., thoughtfully designed its culture and engagement strategy based on its core beliefs of supporting members and enriching its community. From this foundation, it worked with an outside consultant to complete a scan of typical cultural archetypes that exist within organizations. Credit union leaders pulled the attributes they felt were most important and developed a hybrid model for Unitus.

Even if a credit union has this figured out, culture and engagement aren’t just once-a-year items to check off a box, however – maintaining them involves taking continuous actions.

“Cultures can evolve on their own over time, so if you don’t keep your eye on it, you might end up with a culture that’s manifested itself that’s not what you really want for your organization,” Gayle M. Evans, SVP, chief human resources officer at Unitus, said.

To keep a pulse on the organization, Evans said Unitus conducts an annual employee opinion survey. The promise and delivery of a pancake breakfast if full-time participation was achieved helped result in a 98% survey completion rate. Based on the survey results, leadership and each department were given action items.

“We really do something with that information and I would say to an employer that’s experiencing an [engagement] crisis, do [an] assessment, do a root cause analysis, and definitely read every written comment and come up with themes and trends from the written comments, not just the quantitative data,” Evans said.

Knowing Your Role

In order for employees to be successful and engaged, they need to fully understand what their job is and what their goals are, and see a clear path to success.

Hofheimer emphasized that it’s important to place boundaries around what employees are expected to do and/or permitted to do. “If people have a clear sight of what the company values, and what their specific job is as it relates to that, that in turn reinforces accountability systems. It’s basically how you define and measure success within the organization,” he said.

Real-time feedback is also an essential part of employee engagement. Often managers wait until an annual or bi-annual review to offer feedback. However, this doesn’t give employees an opportunity to quickly course correct if they’re making a mistake, and it’s also difficult to recall the specifics of an issue after so much time as passed.

Additionally, in the age of delivery-on-demand, consumers’ expectations are very immediate. If we want something, we want it now, Brandi Stankovic, chief strategy officer at CU Solutions Groups, said. She emphasized this same concept must be applied to the workplace. “I was thinking about it with my kids – we wouldn’t spank our child multiple days after a tantrum. Why would we wait to coach an employee months after something?” she recalled.

This type of immediate feedback can initially be intense and challenging for both leaders and employees, and requires a direct and trusting relationship, she added. However, it allows employees to be aware of expectations, immediately correct their behavior and remain engaged.

Employee Development

Sponsoring employee development or encouraging educational opportunities can create a shared investment and promote engagement. If someone has a sense of growth within their organization, there’s often less turnover.

Stankovic said she urges credit unions to think outside of the box when it comes to employee development. “It’s not just annual regulatory training, it’s not just some sort of ongoing job focused training. Sometimes exposure can happen through being on boards, being involved in the community, or though their own business development efforts or young professionals’ event,” she emphasized. The act of being exposed to different types of environments can provide a huge opportunity for growth and learning.

Unitus offered an opportunity for learning by exposure when it sent two staff members to a credit union in New Zealand for two weeks. The exchange gave employees an opportunity to learn best practices and see how a credit union in another country operates. Evans said the two employees came back very inspired. In November, Unitus will return the favor and host two employees from the New Zealand credit union.

For young employees, who may just be working their way up the ladder and still paying their dues, there’s an opportunity for credit unions to provide resources that can offer a broader, more expansive outlook of what the industry is all about.

“That’s where the cooperative trust programs come into play to provide exposure to people who typically wouldn’t get that type of exposure in a compelling matter, and to provide a road map to say, ‘Here’s where you are in your career and here’s the road map that you may follow into the future,’” Hofheimer said.

Keeping Benefits Competitive

In the competitive race for talent, competitive benefits are a deal breaker for many employees. Stankovic said credit unions need to reexamine contemporary benefits such as flexible scheduling or telework, and learn how to trust employees better so they’re able to provide those benefits.

When coming up with different ways to improve benefits, it’s also important to know your audience and understand its motivation. For example, at Unitus, Evans was tracking workplace trends and saw a country-wide trend of high student loan debt among college graduates. She surveyed her workforce and found this was also the case among employees, so now the credit union is in the process of looking into creating a student loan repayment assistance benefit for employees. “We have a solid culture but we’re constantly looking at trends, employee feedback and the environment to make sure we are offering a workplace experience that is engaging and attractive to people,” Evans said.

Hiring to Strengthen Culture

When it comes to hiring, it’s essential to hire people who are a good fit and support the mission of your organization. To determine this, ask candidates behavior-based interview questions in addition to the technical-based questions.

“Do the organization’s values and mission activate you? Ask questions that get at those behavioral attributes that understand link and fit. There could be someone who absolutely fits within your organization and they have all the technical skills, but they could derail the culture of the organization [if they’re not a good cultural fit],” Hofheimer said.