4 minutes
My HR Assistant -- Happier Members at Duke CU
My HR Assistant
Being able to harness and leverage human resources data is critical to HR’s ability to add strategic business value to credit unions. By automating HR processes that also provide new business insights, our HR department is now working faster and more strategically to improve the CU’s bottom line.
Improved Payroll and HR Efficiencies
In 2012, Priority One Credit Union, with 55 full-time equivalents, South Pasadena, Calif., had two employees working in human resources when one of them went out on leave. That left just one individual—me—to oversee all the HR functions.
I was frustrated with our payroll and HR systems, which were time-consuming and difficult to manage. To get to even the most basic employee information, I had to access three different vendors’ systems with multiple passwords and complex authentication. And none of the systems could talk to each other. If I wanted to access and combine data from our different payroll, benefits, applicant tracking, and time and attendance systems, I was out of luck.
To ease the process, I created manual spreadsheets. But even that was extremely time consuming and inefficiently paper-based. I began to search for a technology solution to transform our HR and payroll processes.
Ultimately, we chose the Rocket solution from HigherUp. With our previous low-tech payroll process, three employees spent all day working on payroll, amounting to more than 20 hours of manpower for each payroll. Rocket has taken on all the heavy lifting: Payroll now requires only two individuals and no more than 90 minutes of manpower.
After the success with payroll, we added Rocket’s applicant tracking and onboarding modules and, as a result, 95 percent of the most time-consuming tasks were taken off my plate and put in the hands of the software. We are now able to get more done in less time.
Furthermore, using HigherUp has enabled Priority One CU to decrease (by 50 percent) the onboarding time of new employees and improved recruiting efficiencies from 90 days to 60 days. In time, I hope to bring this down to 30 days.
By removing the drudgery of payroll and HR reporting, we now spend more time on proactive and strategic business issues.
Robert West is director/employee services at $154 million/24,000-member Priority One Credit Union, South Pasadena, Calif.
Happier Members at Duke CU
When $123 million/15,000-member Duke Credit Union, Durham, N.C., was seeking to create a more consistent member experience, it chose HappyOrNot’s customer satisfaction kiosks. With the kiosks already in use by CUs throughout the U.S., Duke CU took the smiley face devices to a new level by deploying them at every member interaction station within the CU.
Members are presented with the opportunity to express their satisfaction level by responding to a single question (in this case: “Please rate our service today”). Members answer by pushing one of the four smiley (or not) face buttons. The kiosks are strategically placed at the greeter station, each of the loan officers’ desks, the teller windows, and even (soon) the drive-up stations.
“The HappyOrNot kiosks have resulted in a more consistent customer experience,” says Duke CU CEO Daniel Berry, CCE, a CUES member. “The presence of the kiosks and the immediate feedback they provide is always in the minds of our staff, encouraging them to be more careful to do their absolute best to serve every person who comes in the door.”
The credit union deployed its 21 HappyOrNot kiosks beginning April 15. Starting Jan. 1, the bonuses of every member-facing Duke CU employee will be partially tied to the HappyOrNot kiosk reporting results.
“Once we have six months’ worth of data, we will set the 2016 targets,” says Berry. “Several months of data will provide us a better average to set incentives. In addition, we wanted employees to recognize that one frown wouldn’t eliminate their incentive. However, we need to provide the best service possible so one frown doesn’t lead to another.”
Reports Help With Coaching
The cloud-based service generates reports and emails them to management the following morning, providing an indication of overall satisfaction levels and, more important, specific times of the day when those levels can be improved.
“Trends allow managers to identify employees who need coaching,” says Berry. The manager can consider the underlying reasoning: personality conflict, communication differences, and/or not being able to resolve issues.
“Our experience has been that consistency has been excellent,” adds Berry. “A [side] benefit is that employees treat each member individually. They understand that the opinion that matters most is the individual in front of them. After a difficult transaction, the employee knows the next person in line is separate.”
This article was originally published on the CUES website. Read the complete article.
