Merging Credit Union Culture With Grace

A credit union’s brand and history within its field of membership isn’t something that is top-of-mind when life is moving along as it normally does. But when the world stops and is dramatically changed overnight, that’s typically when credit union leaders are thankful they spent time and money over the years to create a brand and culture that they can tap into to provide comfort and project strength to employees and members.

The Sacramento, Calif.-based Golden 1 Credit Union ($19.5 billion in assets, 1.1 million members) built a brand and cultural foundation that executives were able to use and highlight as the pandemic shut down the world.

Golden 1 EVP and Chief People Officer Heather Andrade-Neumann spoke with CU Times about how the credit union built upon its brand to help employees and made large strategic shifts to successfully navigate the treacherous pandemic waters. Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

CU Times: What has your focus for Golden 1 been since the pandemic?

Neumann: I’ll just say I pulled my hair out during the last few years because you know how it was quite crazy during the pandemic. You know, for us it was really making sure that we could clearly define and communicate our structure of our culture, and our organizational culture is very important.

But I think for us, what helped us through this, I would say pre-pandemic and also during and then post, is our company culture is very intentional and not accidental. I’d say we leaned really heavily into it. I think maybe before what we might have taken for granted is we have a great organization. I think that by definition, we really had to focus on our company culture. It’s always been a priority for us, but I would say we had to really adapt to what it meant during the pandemic. You know, what’s our new normal?

We were in the office five days a week – with the pandemic, that changed. We went out on a Friday and thought we would be back in two weeks. And we didn’t come back into the office. We did have a core group onsite and leadership took shifts for almost two years. It was quite crazy.

CU Times: How did you adjust your strategies for hiring?

Neumann: So to be able to adjust as part of our interview process, we really looked for and continue to look for employees who could demonstrate their capabilities and align to our values. Also at the same time, ensuring that we as an organization were very clear on Golden 1’s overall mission, and our core values and the emphasis on our culture.

We asked ourselves, ‘Why come to work for us?’ We did have to be more creative. We never did hybrid before. Right now we’ve got 60% of our employees post-pandemic that have the ability to work remote, and that’s anywhere in the state. We also have some out-of-state employment for niche roles. That was something that we never did before, which was huge for us. We’ve always had very competitive compensation and excellent benefits. But we found we really had to be focused on flexibility. So 60% of our employees are remote [and hybrid] and those are jobs such as in our contact center. We have various roles that we’ve designated with strong key performance metrics that we can measure, and that actually has improved our, I would say, our pipeline of talent.

CU Times: You mentioned hybrid work – what about your branch employees?

Neumann: We’ve got over 600 to 700 employees that are associated with our branch networks that didn’t walk away during the pandemic. Our branches stayed open in most cases. So for us, we had to be very flexible. So that was providing additional mental health benefits, additional benefits for childcare wellness. We rolled out a lot of programs to ensure that our benefits were really competitive. We had to offer something multi-faceted because we found we had to really change our value proposition.

I’ll be honest with you, we had to look to say, because people wanted remote work or even hybrid work, ‘How do we make sure that we have the technology, the right skills and training for our leaders?’ For our leaders to be effective and our employees to be effective, it required us to look at our technology and how we delivered training. And I have to say, I was very proud that we were able to pivot quickly.

CU Times: It sounds like the focus on culture helped you through the past few years.

Neumann: It’s really important because in the world post-COVID, there’s a war on talent. We’re still not fully recovered. I’ve got to say by leaps and bounds, I think our reputation and what we do in the community has caused us to get some fantastic candidates.

CU Times: What have you learned during this time?

Neumann: I think one of the things we learned post-COVID is to have some grace. [Because of] my background I’m used to having remote employees globally. I’m not used to being in the same place domiciled with my workforce. So for me, remote was very normal. I realize that’s not the case for most credit unions or financial institutions. And so [I’ve been] working very closely with our leadership team to say we’ve got a great culture, strong engagement, and strong employee satisfaction and retention. But we know this is going to change. People are experiencing a lot of things during the pandemic. And the way that we worked, it’s never going to go back. And we had to very quickly understand that we weren’t going to go back to a nine-to-five.

What’s interesting is had you told me prior to the pandemic that we would be primarily hybrid as the default, I would’ve said there’s no way.

CU Times: Can you expand on that thought?

Neumann: I was trying a pilot program prior to the pandemic. We realize that flexible work opportunities are here to stay. It’s also a way to attract and retain strong talent. And in this day and age that’s what really sets you apart. And we’re in a war for talent, right? So we aim to win.

One of the things we’re also doing, which I think is really important, is we know our branch employees don’t have that [hybrid] opportunity. You know, they show up and work at the branches.

We actually implemented a program that we kicked off last year as a pilot that allows branch employees to work, depending on the roles, hybrid a couple days a week. Based on feedback [from employees, we asked,] ‘How do we get people from the branch into the back-office or opportunities where they are throughout the state to be able to do meaningful back-office work?’ Or we’d ask, ‘Do you want to transfer into lending? Or do you want to go into our business services?’ So we started this program, which actually got a lot of good feedback from our branch employees who wanted to do more, but perhaps didn’t want to relocate from the Central Valley up to Sacramento. So we’re trying to make it more accessible, and I think I’d rather keep a good employee and find ways that we can grow them and add value to the organization.

CU Times: How do you feel Golden 1 is positioned in the marketplace?

Neumann: I would say we’re very strong! We focus on our educational development and are very competitive with our benefits we offer. I would say having worked in a Fortune 200 company where we had extremely good benefits, I’m very pleased with what we have to offer and how much our company covers. And also our enhanced focus that we place on employee well-being. I’ll be quite honest with you, we know mental health and well-being has been something that’s been a huge forefront that we’ve been very focused on.

We have over 2,200 employees today, which is pretty impressive considering we’ve been able to maintain … we haven’t lost a lot of employees through the pandemic. I mean, you had your ebbs and flows, but my gosh we emerged so strong! It’s a new normal and the way I look at it is constant change is something we have to be comfortable with. And I think we’re continuing to find our groove and I like the direction we’re going in.