Effective Resource Allocation Eases Recovery

This is bonus coverage from “Wading Through Disaster” in the March 2017 issue of CUES’ Credit Union Management magazine.

As Hurricane Matthew made its way up the Atlantic coast in early October, meteorologists projected that its impact on North Carolina would not be very severe. Oops. Instead, it drove right into the southeastern part of the state and blasted 34 counties with high winds and major flooding.

CUES member Mike Lord was new to his current post as president/CEO of State Employees’ Credit Union, Raleigh, N.C., but having been with the organization for over 40 years—30 of them as CFO—he had seen the impact of Hurricanes Hugo, Fran and Floyd in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and he understood the challenges the $34 billion CU was about to face. So while Matthew’s impact was much greater than had been forecast, there was still some time to prepare.

“We anticipated that there would be a big need for cash, since that’s what happened with Hurricane Floyd in 1999, when the greater part of eastern North Carolina was flooded, so we put a lot of cash out there,” Lord says. “Another thing we did when we closed on Friday night as the hurricane approached was to raise equipment off of the floor in flood-prone areas, and we put plastic over computer monitors and keyboards and other electronic equipment in case of heavy rains that would cause roof leaks. We also have branches that are pretty close to rivers that run through some communities, so we checked the sump pumps in those buildings to make sure they were working properly.”

As it became clear that Matthew was hitting North Carolina harder than the weather people had predicted, State Employees’ CU used its website to convey information about branches that were affected due to road closures or downed power lines. At the height of the storm on Sunday afternoon, 51 of the CU’s 257 locations were without power, and over 200 of its 1,100 ATMs were offline.

For an organization like State Employees’ CU with a lot of locations and broad geographic reach, the key to maintaining services was effective internal communication.

“We had put in a new unified communication system statewide that allows our employees to sign in and sign out of the phone system, and allows us to reroute calls made to local branches if a branch is at capacity or if it’s closed,” says Lord. “We can reroute those phone calls anywhere in our network, so if the member had a mobile phone, they could go online and conduct their business through the website, which is interactive, or they could call their local branch office number and talk to a human being who might be sitting in the mountains of North Carolina even though the member might be on the coast.”

Because power was out in many areas, the biggest issue for a lot of members—as predicted—was getting access to cash to purchase groceries and other necessities. State Employees’ CU was able to help members in some affected areas by opening some branches even before power had been restored. With a security guard on hand, staff was able to handle member transactions in person, sometimes phoning the call center themselves, or even recording transactions and keying them into the system later if necessary.

Within 48 hours, all but one branch had reopened. That office, in Lumberton, had taken on 18 inches of water and was still undergoing renovations as of the beginning of 2017. While that was the only branch that suffered physical damage, Lord believes that what set Matthew apart from previous storms affecting North Carolina was the number of roads that were washed out. That created mobility challenges that affected the CU’s ability to allocate resources and personnel where they were needed most. Nevertheless, because of the communication and resource allocation strategies that were in place, Cu leaders were able to shift staff from the closed branch to the other Lumberton location or other nearby facilities in order to meet members’ needs.

“We learn a little something every time these happen, because we’ve gone through these experiences before,” Lord says. “One positive impact of a situation like this is that we get to see the amazing response of our employees. Our staff really went above and beyond to provide services for members in their time of need.  We had people coming to work to help members even while they were dealing with their own personal emergencies. We had employees collecting donations to help other employees in crisis. That is not something we’ve learned; that’s just something we do.”

Bob Jacobson is a freelance writer and editor based in Wisconsin.