EAU CLAIRE, Wis. — The ability to generate team-wide agreement is one of the fundamental elements of strong credit union leadership.
But generating agreement goes beyond simply creating consensus
So earlier this year, Royal Credit Union took steps to align its compensation structure to better reflect the $1.5 billion institution's goals, values and vision.
Organizational Talent Services Manager Nicole Wilson led the project, which focused on management and compensation structure.
"Integrating our strategic goals and core values into our compensation and performance management systems created an aligned solution that we felt was critical to our organization," Wilson said. "This process was definitely a corporate-wide initiative that all leaders across the organization were instrumental in contributing to; it was not just an HR-driven project."
In January 2013, Wilson told all team members that over the course of the year, they would be redesigning their compensation and performance management programs to make sure they were integrated and aligned with their core purpose and strategic goals.
She explained the importance for every team member to have a direct line of sight between their own performance in their roles and Royal's business performance, and also to understand how both would impact monetary rewards in the form of bonuses and salary increases. This ensured a consistent message to everyone.
Communicating Early
"We started communicating early," Wilson added. "We publicly addressed questions about these projects at quarterly all-team-member meetings. In addition, our CEO Rudy Pereira, and our EVP of Organizational Agility Jan Johnson, met with every branch and department during the year. The performance management and compensation changes were frequent discussion topics."
As time went on, 100% of Royal's team members aligned their goals. Feedback found that in November, the credit union's best measurable ROI was posted in team member engagement.
The number of team members who understand how their work fits into Royal's goals rose 20% from 2013 and the number of team members who feel their leaders give them helpful feedback related to their performance increased 24% from 2013.
In addition, the number of team members who feel their performance review is a two-way discussion between them and their leader — where their input is valued — was up 13%.
"The entire talent services team was instrumental in this initiative's success," Wilson said. "They were laser-focused on making it easy for our leaders and team members to relate to and understand. One of our core values is 'make it easy' and we often had to put ourselves in our team members' and leaders' shoes and say "How can we make this review process easier for them while still aligning it?"
Among the many changes was to upgrade from Excel to Halogen software to track goal progress and coaching.
"Everything we do at Royal aligns to our core values and the success of these new programs really lies within that connection," Wilson said.
