Credit Unions Open Their Eyes to DEI

Bystanders with cell phones captured the last minutes of George Floyd’s life on May 25, 2020 as he begged to breathe, pressed to a Minneapolis street under the weight of three police officers.

In the background, a city bus rolled to a stop with its side emblazoned: “Open Your Eyes to a Credit Union.”

The appearance was fleeting, and the percentage of people who noticed the slogan was probably low. And the percentage of people who recognized it as part of CUNA’s awareness campaign was probably even smaller.

But with the denominator for those fractions being in the millions, the notice was significant.

One viewer posted a screenshot June 6 showing the bus slogan in the upper right corner and George Floyd’s head beneath former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s knee in the bottom left. “The bus is giving good advice,” the poster commented.

The “Open Your Eyes” cameo was also noticed by Mark Cummins, CEO of the Minnesota Credit Union Network, who posted a note about Floyd’s death on its website June 2. “I am sure many of you have noticed the Open Your Eyes to a Credit Union bus ad that was present at the time of George Floyd’s murder, captured on video. For us, that image is a powerful reminder that credit unions serve people – all people. And we are present – even in the most difficult times,” he wrote.

That comment was picked up and quoted in a post about Floyd’s death six days later on the Facebook page of the Illinois Quad Cities Chapter of Credit Unions.

And the synchronicity was noticed in Prairieville, La., about 20 miles southeast of Baton Rouge, by Ronaldo Hardy. He’s the former CEO of two small Louisiana credit unions and helped found a consulting business for credit unions that helps them build programs for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

“The irony of that is crazy,” Hardy said.

When COVID-19 was declared a pandemic in March 2020, Hardy and others wondered whether credit unions would remain committed to their DEI goals as they struggled to get a grip on the pandemic’s disruptions.

“When George Floyd happened in the middle of the pandemic, what it showed is there is never a moment when you get to abandon this subject,” he said.

Chauvin’s convictions are now in the past, but the forces that brought him and Floyd together remain present.

The kind of racism and bias implied by encounters that lead police to kill Black men is not limited to law enforcement. To some degree, it touches all facets of American culture and institutions. And, for Hardy, that includes credit unions.

He began actively speaking up about diversity, equity and inclusion in 2017.

“We have a big problem here,” Hardy said. “We have an industry that only focuses on older white men. Women and minorities and younger people were under-represented. I said, ‘We’ve got to change something.’”

He added, “It was a very uncomfortable subject matter at that time.”

Now it is his daily subject matter – and his profession.

“I did this as passion work first,” he said. “When I moved into this space, DEI was not monetizable. Nobody was paying for someone to tell them how to do DEI back then.”

Hardy is only 37, but his experience in the financial industry goes back 20 years.

He grew up in a tiny town called St. Francisville on the Mississippi River, 30 miles north of Baton Rouge. He was a high school senior working at a McDonald’s in 2001 when the head teller of a local bank passed through. She liked his personality and invited him to apply for a job as a part-time teller.

He got his first job at a credit union in 2004 with the Baton Rouge-based La Capitol Federal Credit Union, which then had $262.5 million in assets and 45,089 members. He worked his way through seven promotions to branch sales manager by 2011.

He went back to school in August 2011, and was hired in November as president/CEO of Shell Geismar Federal Credit Union when it had $23.2 million in assets and 1,974 members. He negotiated an acquisition of an even smaller nearby credit union in 2012, which helped boost its size to $28.6 million in assets and 3,163 members by the time he left in 2016.

In the meantime, he had completed his bachelor’s degree and received his master’s degree from Louisiana State University in human resource education.

He was hired as president/CEO of Southwest Louisiana Credit Union in 2016. It grew from $90.6 million in assets and 17,427 members at the end of 2016 to $106 million in assets and 18,921 members at the end of 2019.

Then he began speaking out about the need for credit unions to address diversity, equity and inclusion, and started getting booked to make speeches. Organizations began asking him to help them form and carry out strategic DEI plans.

“I had to make a decision what my contribution to the industry was going to be,” Hardy said. “Was I going to continue working in a credit union in singularity, and helping it move forward, or is it time for me to make a transition?”

In October 2019, he answered that question. He left the credit union to join CU Strategic Planning as one of its six owners.

As its chief diversity and inclusion officer, Hardy regularly meets with credit union boards to explain why he believes they should make the commitment to make DEI part of their strategic plan – and, ideally, to hire his firm to help them devise a plan, carry it out and measure its progress.

Hardy said his first task is to stress that DEI requires a commitment by the board to make it part of their strategic objectives.

“If it is not elevated all the way up to the board level, it just doesn’t work. To do a true commitment to building a culture that’s committed to diversity, inclusion and equity, it takes at least three years to do it the right way,” he said, adding, “Training alone will not get it done.”

Hardy builds plans that encompass community development, board governance, management, brand and culture.

The first step for an organization is assessing where it is so Hardy can tailor strategic goals, training to help it reach them and metrics to chart progress. Some credit unions might have most of their bias in race. Others might have heavier bias toward gender roles.

Hardy uses an assessment that measures employees’ implicit bias on “eye test” areas, including race, gender and sexuality. Those tests typically take about 45 minutes.

Board members and management take more extensive implicit bias tests that also include areas like weight, size, disabilities and age. Those tests take about 75 minutes.

“For leadership, we go further,” he said. “Leaders have the ability to hire and promote people. If they’re making decisions based on these additional biases, it’s a problem.”

He gathers detailed information about policies and practices around internal hiring, external hiring and disciplinary actions by race, birth gender and age. He gathers counts of the team, leadership and volunteers by race, birth gender and age. He then compares the numbers to the community composition.

He also conducts in-depth interviews of leadership and key managers in human relations, lending and sometimes member services.

Usually within 90 days, he delivers a seven- to 10-page report that identifies areas of bias, and designs a 60-minute webinar training customized for that organization.

As a next step, the board might retain CU Strategic Planning to help the credit union develop a customized strategic and tactical plan. Hardy can also manage the project and continue to measure how the credit union progresses.

Some mileposts are no-brainers, such as the composition of staff, leadership and volunteers. Likewise, it’s easy to measure recruitment, retention and attrition.

Other impacts are more subtle: Hardy will look at reports and surveys expecting to see rising employee satisfaction, member satisfaction and productivity.

“Your bottom line is going to improve,” Hardy said. “These aren’t just theories. They are things I’ve seen work.”

Hardy said there are common reasons why credit unions and other organizations hesitate to commit to DEI. One is “the myth that inclusion inadvertently means exclusion,” he said. “People think they’re going to be pushed out. That’s not the case. Organizations wouldn’t be doing that if they’re doing it the right way.”

Sometimes leaders might not believe there’s a problem. Hardy likens this to the 90% right-handed majority not recognizing the fact that every day the left-handed minority has to navigate a world where school desks have writing surfaces on the wrong side and tools like can openers and scissors are designed to be used by the right hand.

“There are left-handed people who are uncomfortable every single day in ways we are not. Because we are comfortable, we see nothing wrong with the design of society that has been built for us,” he said.

Another reason leaders don’t commit is because they’re afraid they’ll fail.

“The reality is you do have to embrace that you’re not going to be perfect when you do this work,” Hardy said. “You design a culture where there’s grace built into it. There’s an understanding that we aren’t going to get it right all the time, but we’re committed to it.”

Finally, there is the issue of cost and return on investment. Hardy wouldn’t share how much it costs to implement a program, but he said he is prepared with a bank of research to show that DEI not only improves a company’s culture, but also its financial condition.

To do the job right, organizations need to commit to strategic goals that will take at least three years to achieve.

“It’s not a quick fix,” he said. “Some organizations want to see their return on investment tomorrow.”