Are You Going to Tolerate That?

Tolerance is not only a word I spell incorrectly about 80% of the time, it’s also an idea that’s very hard to execute for some people.

I’ve spent a majority of the summer in a very beautiful part of the country. This area is well outside my normal routine and life – not only geographically, but culturally. The people at the grocery store are very quick to tell you what kind of lousy day they’re having. “Oh, you brought your own bags? Great.” All said sarcastically. The lady at the convenience store greets me with a growly, “What the hell do you want?” while continuing her conversation with another person about some guy that apparently she didn’t like in high school. The fishmonger only half-smiles and points at what you’re asking for. Once I nod my head, he wraps it up and I’m on my way without a word spoken from him. The upside? The haddock was delicious.

Credit unions aren’t conveniently located anywhere in the vicinity here, and I’ve been going bonkers wondering if they have the same local mood and attitude as the grocery store clerk, convenience store worker and fishmonger. If so, do their members and managers tolerate that?

Besides considering where these people live as a reason for their strange attitudes, I’m struck with the thoughts, “Do they all hate their jobs and/or their employers? Or maybe it’s the end of the tourist season and they don’t have to placate to the out-of-towners anymore? What are they not tolerating?”

Whatever the reason or reasons, I continue to wonder about how credit unions would handle these kinds of member-facing employees barely tolerating those doing business with them. And, I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that these are hourly employees. Next time I’m at one of these establishments, I’ll wincingly ask and see if they give me an answer.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics report from 2017, 80.4 million people ages 16 and older are paid at an hourly rate; that’s more than 50% of all employees in the country. The average wage of a credit union teller, according to ZipRecruiter, is $13 per hour, which is about $6 per hour higher than the federal minimum wage.

IBISWorld, a business information and market research firm, stated that there are 319,114 credit union employees in the U.S. in 2019 and the average number of employees per credit union is 16.8. Even with all of the mergers and acquisitions, the number of employees has actually gone up in the past five years.

On the flip side, the IBISWorld credit union report also stated, “The revenue per employee for the average business in the credit union industry in the U.S. has decreased in the last five years.” In short, the number of credit union employees is up and the money coming in per employee is down.

I bring up all of these data points to say that wages aren’t the be-alls and end-alls of gaging success and/or failures of credit unions. But wages are definitely the main point of why we and they do our jobs. So it’s pretty important. The other important things, I believe, relate to employees feeling and believing like they have some kind of ownership in the successes and failures of the organization. We’ve all had crummy jobs coming up to get to where we are now. But the best jobs I’ve had, and probably you’ve had, were the ones where you get to really connect and become part of the solutions that help the company or business become better at what it does for the people it serves. Alas, engaging employees to that kind of level appears to be an uphill climb.

Sadly, a new study from the ADP Research Institute’s Global Study of Engagement showed employee engagement in the U.S. is dropping. The study, which involved nearly 20,000 full- and part-time employees in 19 countries, indicated only 17% of employees feel like they are engaged at work. That’s a drop of 2% since 2017.

What is the problem? Why are employee engagement numbers dropping? Well, the evolution of going to work has definitely changed. In days of old, you showed up, did your job, went to lunch, did some afternoon work and went home. Today’s culture tends to revolve around the concept that we are all on a team, so let’s work together to reach a common goal for the organization. We can do it!

But following up on and actually managing teamwork like that takes some extra effort, time and individual personality management. The idea of bringing an excited teamwork atmosphere to the job is great. The energy it takes to maintain is exhausting. Like most things that are hard, managers tend to give up and let things slide back to how they were: Come to work, do the job, go to lunch, do some afternoon work and go home. It’s a simple 40-hour work week rinse and repeat cycle. And if you think about it, as a manager or executive, that’s a pretty easy way to go and be evaluated on productivity, revenue and other organizational goals for the year. The downside is that employees will simply slide in and out of these positions without truly buying into what you stand for. You’ve basically become another convenience store with another employee you can easily replace. It’s a cycle of tolerance. In this case, it’s just tolerating the job for as long as needed.

HR departments I’m sure do a fine job recruiting, giving new employee orientation classes and ensuring that we sign the latest employee handbook we all pretend to read. But I believe teams and functions of those teams should be created, nurtured and developed by the executive leaders of those specific work areas. That puts the onus on the lending executive or marketing leader to build up the team’s tolerance levels to extraordinary heights.

Take the irritated gas station lady, who might make $12 per hour. Or take your teller who’s making $14 per hour. How can your branch manager or operations executive ensure that employee is doing their job in a way that they feel and know they are building something greater than themselves, and at the same time building something they can be proud to own?

It’s a tough spot executives find themselves in – especially with hourly employees. Are you just tolerating them, or are they tolerating you and the members? Maybe tomorrow they’ll be done tolerating it all and greet a member with, “What the hell do you want?”

Michael Ogden is editor-in-chief for CU Times. He can be reached at mogden@cutimes.com.