W.B. King

If roughing it together in the wilderness and cooking for one another build character and team spirit in schoolkids, scouts and soldiers, why shouldn't they do the same for bankers?

The "Culture Club" at Machias Savings Bank is not a group of '80s music fans. It's a committee — made up mainly of people who work in its human resources and marketing departments — that oversees the bank's employee engagement initiatives, including its new Culture Champion program.

Chesapeake Bank in Kilmarnock, Va., has endeared itself to its community, and its employees, by rewarding those who support area businesses.

Roughly once a quarter senior executives at Community Bank in Brandon, Miss., take a select group of up-and-coming managers on a three-day retreat. The trips are part of a management training course known as the Falcon Program that took flight in 2012.

Omni Community Credit Union of Battle Creek, Mich., tops our third annual "Best Credit Unions to Work For" list. CUs were judged on a variety of topics, including creative incentive plans, volunteering, engaging employees in decision-making, health and wellness programs and perks like holiday parties and off-site adventures.

Offering 24/7 service via self-service technology is only the first step. The next step: allowing members to schedule when and how they want to do business with you.

Credit union executives at the C-level have seen the writing on the wall about millennials for years, but a recent mobile-banking milestone has resulted in significant takeaways for the industry.

How credit unions can get the most digital branding benefits from being on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Collecting data to streamline operations and enhance member engagement is an all-important goal, but big data builds up and can dump too much disparate information — supersaturating an otherwise well-intended process.

It’s one thing to get members to enroll for new whiz-bang technology; it’s another to get 80% of enrollees to actually use it, which is exactly what happened at this credit union. And it’s not in the Silicon Valley: try Wyoming.