How to Foster a Great Culture in a Remote Environment
Vizo Financial discusses how it maintains strong employee engagement despite physical distance.
The big question facing credit unions, and every organization really, is how do you maintain or build a great culture in a remote environment? Despite being physically apart, creating a culture where everyone can thrive, enjoy coming to work and make their best contribution is absolutely possible.
It’s true that not every job can be done away from the office, but many employees are experiencing and enjoying the freedom and flexibility of the pandemic-induced lifestyle of working from home. Yet many leaders are struggling with their workforce remaining remote. Many have a desire for people to return to the office to maintain collaboration, camaraderie and productivity. Here’s my message to leaders: Embrace the remote evolution with open arms. All the things you want from your team and for your credit union are possible with people working from home.
At Vizo Financial Corporate Credit Union, we have listened to our employees and stayed the course of remote work with overwhelmingly positive results. We use Gallup’s Q12, an ongoing, 12-item employee engagement survey, to measure our employee engagement – a term that Gallup popularized. Engaged employees are those who are enthused about their work and enthusiastic about their workplace. They routinely and willingly give their discretionary effort. Engaged employees are the backbone of a highly productive and enjoyable culture. Some of the beneficial traits of an engaged employee include:
- Taking responsibility for their performance and attitude at work;
- Not letting a problem become an excuse for inaction;
- Being proactive in their approach;
- Rarely complaining or placing blame; and
- Consistently going above and beyond what is required.
As you read this list, I’m sure there are employees fitting this description who immediately come to mind. Just imagine if you had a credit union full of these people. How much would the employee experience, as well as the member experience and overall productivity, improve?
Here at Vizo Financial, we’re proud to say that 83% of our workforce is engaged as reported in our 2021 end-of-year survey. This is more than double the national average, which hovers around 35%. We do have some advantages that help us maintain a strong and desirable culture in our remote environment. One is the tenure of our team. People know their team members and co-workers, having worked with them for years. We also have a top-notch IT team that ensures everyone has the technology needed to stay connected even when spontaneous discussions must take place.
With that said, there are many companies with a long-tenured staff that have seen declines in the strength of their culture. One of the reasons our culture continues to thrive is because we actively and intentionally work on it. Since March of 2020, we’ve been sending a daily email with encouraging stories, interactive games and contests, and video interviews of our employees so we can get to know one another better, even though we’re mostly remote. We have also implemented a number of 30-minute, voluntary, weekly virtual events to keep people connected, learning and communicating, including:
- Friday Chat and Chew: A lunchtime activity where we essentially play games and have some fun at the end of the week.
- Strengths and Snacks: We work to be a strengths-based organization where people are encouraged to be who they are, while getting to do more of the things they’re good at and enjoy. CliftonStrengths, a tool that assesses individuals’ strengths in order to maximize potential, is at the center of this approach. Each one of these development sessions focuses on one of the 34 CliftonStrengths to give people a deeper understanding of their natural gifts.
- Leaders at Lunch: Here, managers of all levels come together to share ideas and discuss best practices. Attendees usually leave the sessions with a fresh perspective and a stronger bond with their colleagues.
- Connection Clubs: These are end-of-the-day gatherings where people with like interests get together and discuss a specific topic. Some of the Connection Clubs cover movies, technology, sports, parenting and novels.
Prior to working remotely, we were already using virtual meetings to bring our entire employee base together from our four campuses to learn, strengthen relationships and ensure everyone understood what was going on at the corporate. These included:
- Monthly sessions to discuss our vision, values, teamwork and self-improvement;
- Monthly sessions that cover leadership development; and
- Bi-annual all-staff meetings and quarterly managers’ meetings.
We still continue these meetings in a remote environment and they’ve been successful in bringing staff closer together.
Finally, we have a committed executive team that is very purposeful about engaging employees and building a culture where remote workers can thrive. They encourage employees to participate in these sessions and even attend themselves.
Managers carry the culture and senior leaders are the architects. What we’ve seen at Vizo Financial is a strong example of how a purposeful effort by credit union leadership can construct a strong foundation, so whether people are in the office, working a hybrid schedule or operating in a fully remote environment, the credit union’s culture can strengthen and endure.
Joe Bertotto Chief Culture Officer Vizo Financial Corporate CU Greensboro, N.C.