Employee Growth: An Unplanned Pandemic Side-Effect

One thing credit unions and credit union organizations have in common is that their employees’ routines were upended in March 2020 when COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. Where they differ greatly from one another is in what those routines look like now, with some teams already back to their pre-pandemic work lives – or pushing to get there soon – and others, inspired by the unexpected benefits of operating at a distance from one another, having no intention of returning to offices at full capacity.

Regardless of where individual organizations stand on the work-from-home debate, employee engagement and development remains a priority industrywide, and all credit unions faced the challenge of evolving their programs to keep employees engaged and focused on career growth despite ongoing disruption.

Onboarding and training programs that were previously held in person at the $3.6 billion, Orlando, Fla.-based FAIRWINDS Credit Union transitioned to a virtual format, requiring managers to make adjustments to ensure the quality remained high, EVP of Human Resources Catherine Hertz explained. Branch employees, for example, received additional training onsite to fill gaps left by the newly-online initial onboarding program. “It wasn’t the ideal way to onboard people, but what we did to compensate for that is when those new hires went out into the branch environment, they had a person shadowing and mentoring them to take over some of the pieces that we could not do in our normal training cycle, and they became stronger partners as a result of that,” she said.

Employee-focused programs that saw few changes post-pandemic at FAIRWINDS were those that did not rely on in-person interaction to be successful, including its nearly 20-year-old Holiday Wish program that allows employees to make and grant holiday wishes for one another (recent examples included funding a new wheelchair for an employee’s mother and equipping a branch with a Keurig machine), and a debt-free club where employees receive awards for reaching financial wellness milestones.

At the $1.6 billion, Vancouver, Wash.-based iQ Credit Union, moving employee programs online in some ways led to increased levels of engagement and inclusivity, according to Vice President of Human Resources Shelan Stritzke. When the pandemic hit, the credit union had a robust collection of wellness, engagement and development programs that it took virtual, including a fitness boot camp, book club, annual all-staff meeting, employee forums, “huddles” with executives, job shadowing and leadership integrity coaching. It has since created a new virtual gathering series, “Share Your Skills” (in a recent installment, one employee taught others how to cook traditional Cambodian egg rolls), as well as an inclusion and belonging task force.

Stritzke noted the virtual events have encouraged some employees to open up to one another more and appreciate their differences. “The Share Your Skills events have allowed us to meet both the social connectedness that [our] wellness [committee] strives for, and developing those deeper relationships that we’ve been working on through inclusion and belonging.”

FAIRWINDS employees who began working at home at the onset of the pandemic returned to the office in May, with the exception of some who are at high risk of developing severe COVID-19 or have children attending school virtually until the end of the school year, Hertz said. During the 14 months when the credit union’s staff was largely remote, employees stayed connected through virtual lunches and happy hours, and an internal social media platform and Facebook page. The credit union also created a hub page on its intranet to post COVID-related updates and guides on how to manage a team remotely, among other content. But having a strong culture pre-pandemic is what gave FAIRWINDS the best advantage heading into its period of remote work, Hertz said.

“Employee engagement has been a core focus for us for so many years, so us paying attention to the engagement of our crew when they were remote was more of just a different channel of us paying attention,” she said. “We have a culture and leadership that has built a truly open door. So because we already had that as our foundation, it didn’t materially change for us, and I think that put us in a stronger position than maybe organizations that don’t pay attention to that all the time.”

The Servion Group, a New Brighton, Minn.-based lending services CUSO, also viewed its pandemic-induced remote workforce as temporary. With the exception of some regional sales positions, all of its approximately 300 roles are onsite; 25% of staff are currently back in the office, with the rest scheduled to return in August, CEO Brad ­Crandall and Human Resources Director Jesse Kook said.

The CUSO hired around 100 employees over the past year and was forced to onboard them all remotely, which resulted in an incomplete experience for new hires, as they were primarily focused on getting up to speed on the job they were about to do and unable to learn what The Servion Group does in its full capacity, according to Crandall and Kook.

“We like to focus on giving folks career opportunities here at Servion, which means they can cross train, learn how the whole organization works and end up in different departments,” Kook said. “And that’s a really hard thing to do when they don’t have somebody they can go sit next to and see what they’re doing in the office here. It’s really hard to coach, mentor and develop new skills in new areas of the business being remote.”

Kook said he believes while offering employees more flexibility and empathy – two things that became standard in workplaces during the pandemic – is here to stay, full-time remote work is not. Crandall noted remote work not only hinders career development, but beats up on an organization’s culture. “Companies’ [employees] take on the personalities of their leaders, and if they can’t get face to face with these folks, how do they know how to act, or what’s right or wrong?” Crandall asked.

iQ, on the other hand, has no plans to bring all non-member-facing employees back to the office. The credit union entered the pandemic with one-third of its workforce already working from home and the remainder has since embraced the setup, except for a few who preferred onsite work and were allowed to return while taking COVID-related safety precautions. iQ is now testing an office hoteling concept, where employees can work from a station at an iQ location of their choice for one day at a time.

Stritzke said in an early 2021 survey, branch employees indicated they still receive a high level of service when they reach out to back-office remote employees for support. “Overwhelmingly, employees felt good about the arrangement, both the work-from-home folks and those still in the branches.”

She added remote employees may not feel that way forever, though. “The reopening and where we’re at in the pandemic is still a moving target, so feelings may change, and people may want to go back to the office when the pandemic is more fully resolved,” Stritzke said.

CUNA Mutual Group in Madison, Wis., has also embraced the benefits of remote work, which include the ability to access a wide talent pool that isn’t limited by geographic location, Director of Talent ­Andrea Cooper said. It too entered the pandemic with one-third of its workforce remote; 95% of employees started working from home when the pandemic began, and while some have trickled back to the office in the past year, no one is being required to return. Cooper said she envisions a hybrid remote/onsite workforce model taking hold in the near future.

“So many companies, no matter the industry, have had to get creative with leading this virtual workforce, and I believe the learnings that they got will have to carry forward post-COVID,” Cooper said. “If you think about things like flexibility, how they’re serving their customers, and how they’re finding ways to connect and be productive without a big group of employees coming together for certain meetings, it’s one of those things where once you go through it, you can never go back fully.”

Remote workforce or not, credit unions and credit union organizations are going beyond basic development programs such as tuition reimbursement and classroom-style training when it comes to moving employees ahead in their careers. The Servion Group runs a program inspired by the TV show “Shark Tank,” where employees can share their original ideas for improving a process or solving a problem at the organization for a chance to get it implemented and win a cash prize. In one instance, a package of paper documents became lost for six months after an employee inadvertently stuck it in a box labeled “Keep Refrigerated” and another stored it in the office fridge, prompting the development of a formal package tracking system. “It shifts people from complaining about things to finding solutions for things,” Kook said of the Shark Tank program.

The Servion Group has also embraced a philosophy of hiring people who don’t necessarily have a background specific to the job they’re applying for, but are a good fit for the organization culturally and can be trained to excel in their new position. Since credit unions typically don’t have a pipeline of candidates with specific training in their industry to choose from, at least at the entry level, Kook ­encouraged recruiters at credit unions to do the same. “Hire the right people – the people you want to work with and want serving your members – and then teach them what you need them to do,” he advised.

He and Crandall said they’re also proponents of “learning by doing” – having employees learn new skills while serving the organization instead of taking time away from work to train.

CUNA Mutual offers a number of formal learning and development programs to employees, but Cooper emphasized that while those formal opportunities are important to have in place, the most significant growth happens through unstructured experiences, which have occurred frequently during the pandemic. She cited the 70:20:10 model, which says 70% of employee development is due to experience, 20% to exposure to decision-makers and 10% to training, as a good rule of thumb.

“During the pandemic, especially the first several months, I was so focused on the basics that thinking about things like training or going to a program was not on our radar,” Cooper said. “But looking back, the amount of growth and stretch we’ve had this year has been huge. If you think about things like the social justice discussions we’ve been having, and how leaders have had to help their teams adapt to the demands of the pandemic and then create new solutions … I think development has happened in each and every one of those moments.”

And when organizations foster growth, as well as provide their teams with a clear path to internal advancement, they not only contribute to employees’ career satisfaction but reap the benefits of low turnover. Promoting from within and watching entry-level employees rise up the ranks to the C-suite is a common practice at FAIRWINDS, Hertz said – the average employee tenure is eight and a half years and several executives grew their careers at the credit union, including the CEO who began as a teller in the 1980s. This tradition of longevity has bred success for both the employees and credit union.

“They’ve been on the front lines, they’ve served members directly, and even if they’ve moved to a more indirect role that supports the front line, they’ve learned from that what it takes to operate the organization,” she said of the frontline employees who have advanced. “They’ve had the benefit of seeing the company from a variety of different lenses, know the history of who we are and what we’re doing, and can really stay pure to our core mission.”