Leveraging Human Capital to Achieve Your Strategic Vision and Goals

With an increasing menu of financial services options for consumers to choose from, standing out in the crowd requires credit unions to utilize all their assets in the most effective way. Leveraging your credit union’s human capital to its maximum potential may require changing the way you have always looked at things. But doing so can result in a whole new vision that leads to better service for your members and long-term success for your credit union.

Simply stated, the key to member satisfaction is providing good service–consistently–not just every so often. And the recipe for this non-wavering level of quality service begins with an experienced, well-trained team of employees who share a sense of ownership in making sure your credit union is successful.

If you think about it, loyal, long-term member relationships are the “icing on the cake” results of creating a positive work environment where employees are knowledgeable, feel valued and are committed to achieving the credit union’s goals.

Key to Satisfied Staff is Effective Leadership

To build an effective organization and leverage the skills and talents existing employees possess, an effective leader must be committed to modeling the type of behavior he or she desires for the staff to emulate daily. In addition, a leader must be willing to:

• communicate the organization’s vision to all employees;
• provide the tools and training necessary to empower employees to do their jobs effectively;
• involve staff in making decisions that will ultimately impact how work gets done;
• delegate responsibility to encourage professional growth for all employees; and
• listen to employee input to create a true sense of teamwork among the workforce.

If implemented effectively, this behavior will help establish a partnership with employees where everyone is pulling in the same direction, at the same time, and with a similar effort in order to reach the credit union’s strategic objectives and goals.

Common Obstacles to Creating Effective Employee Partnerships

Without a clear appreciation of the benefits of creating this type of work environment–where employees are engaged as true work partners–leaders can easily fall into the trap of operating from a model where decisions are made based on their perspective alone. In other instances, they opt to stay the present course simply because they don’t know where or how to begin to create a more team-based environment.

Unfortunately, some leaders are merely victims of bad leadership habits that were passed along to them as they climbed the management ladder. This not only prevents the creation of a more productive work environment, it hinders talented staff from reaching their potential and creates unnecessary attrition. Any or all of these leadership faults can ultimately lead to a loss of members if the level of consistent, caring, quality service expected fluctuates or declines.

Finding the Right Balance

In addition to knowing the right combination of products and services required to compete in today’s financial services environment, effective leaders realize the important role highly motivated, knowledgeable employees play in creating long-term member relationships.

Create a collaborative environment where employees are well-trained and empowered to work at full capacity, and people will notice. Because even in today’s highly-automated world, nothing can replace the value that knowledgeable, caring member service can bring to a business transaction experience. And when consumers find that level of support, it won’t take long for word to spread to others who are looking for that same type of financial services relationship.

J. Keith Hughey is senior consultant at CUES Supplier member and strategic partner JMFA, a leading provider of profitability and performance-improvement consulting. For more than 35 years, JMFA has been recognized as one of the most trusted names in the industry for earnings enhancement and expense control programs, training and development, and recruitment services, as well as product, service, pricing and technology-improvement consulting. Simply stated, JMFA’s programs and services are designed to increase income or reduce expenses. JMFA is proud to be a preferred provider among many industry groups. To learn more about JMFA, please visit www.JMFA.com or call 800.809.2307.