Managing Culture When a Workforce Is in Profound Transition
Remote workers must still feel empowered to serve members, and all aspects of culture must work together to make this so.
COVID-19 is continuing to disrupt and transform the workplace. The impact on employees is serious as it relates to member relationships, expectations and the culture of an internal organization. After more than a year of working at a distance, many of the changes that COVID-19 brought will become permanent. Central business districts are bracing for lower office populations as a substantial portion of employees continue to work at a distance.
CEOs are focused on how to maintain and manage an effective and healthy culture when the workplace is undergoing such dramatic change. Culture starts at the top, where leaders envision it and manage it. Leaders are the engineers of culture. They make sure that the organization has the right structures to support productive employee behaviors. Plus, they must become champions of culture through their role modeling and relentless communication.
Smart credit union leaders understand that member satisfaction is directly related to employee safety and engagement. Many are figuring out how to reconfigure the culture to maintain and heighten engagement with a disbursed workforce. Employee engagement and relatedly member satisfaction is critical in such a competitive financial services landscape. These days, a person’s view of an organization seems to be only as good as their last interaction, whether it was in person or digital.
The IBM Institute for Business Value released data focused on employee and consumer expectations. This data indicated a sharp shift in expectations. As an example, to ensure a sustainable future, 54% of consumers are now willing to pay a premium for brands that are sustainable or environmentally responsible. The recruitment of workers will be a critical differentiator in the future. Remarkably, 48% of the respondents in this current survey indicated that prospective employees will accept a lower salary to work for an environmentally responsible organization. To punctuate the profound impact that the pandemic has had on all of us, 93% of respondents said the pandemic has increased their focus on the critical nature of environmental sustainability.
Larger credit unions have abundant resources to invest in people and technology. They can invest in enhanced workforce development, which complements a focused use of artificial intelligence and a massive attention to cybersecurity. Similarly, smart credit union leaders are focused on providing these tools to give their employees everything that they need to serve members in an unprecedented environment. They are managing the shifts in how employees approach work, creating new management techniques, employing enhanced technology, and upgrading executive and staff capabilities.
This upended environment requires strategies that combine technology with employee learning and development. Both are needed to engage employees and empower them to serve members and communities. More tech-savvy organizations have integrated the strengths of technology and people, and importantly, they outperform their less tech-savvy peers. Technology is more than just a tool for them. It provides forward-looking opportunities to develop new relationships with secure technology platforms that reflect members’ needs for 24/7 access.
Making a major investment in people and technology with a goal to “delight” members is no small task and no one organization can do it all. Leadership must be laser-focused on core internal competencies and rely on outside organizations for other skills and needs. IBM reported that for outperformers, expertise exists in an ecosystem that plays to strengths, using internal capabilities plus external firms that deliver needed additional expertise. State-of-the-art technological capability can address cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and other hardware and software issues. Similarly, leaders seek external expertise to assist them in the design and management of organizational culture in this fluid environment.
External experts can support leadership in assuring that the organization’s culture has spot-on structures and procedures to support productive employee behaviors. What’s more difficult to manage, however, and where outside partners can particularly help, is working through how the pandemic is changing the dynamics of the informal networks and unwritten rules that form the basis of an organizational culture. A workforce that is continuing remote work must still feel empowered to serve the member, and all aspects of culture must work together to make this so.
Regardless of whether the resources are internal or external, all the entities in the ecosystem must lead with purpose and values. Indeed, for IBM’s outperformers, a culture built on the values of ethics and integrity engages employees and outside partners alike to bring about innovative business solutions, stronger member relationships, and improved efficiency and resilience in these uncertain times.
Stuart R. Levine is Chairman and CEO for Stuart Levine & Associates LLC in Miami Beach, Fla.