The little things can make all the difference in recruiting and retaining top tech talent.
Take BECU for instance. The credit union is headquartered in Tukwila, Wash., about 11 miles south of Seattle. The area is a tough job market, and BECU must compete against the likes of Amazon and Microsoft for employees.
To do that, it’s had to become more flexible, explained Melanie Walsh, chief administrative officer at the $20 billion-asset BECU, speaking during a panel discussing recruiting tech talent during the National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions’ annual conference in New Orleans last week. Some of the changes BECU has made include allowing employees to work remotely and even implementing a daily causal dress code.
“Moving to a causal dress code was in direct response to the competition,” Walsh said. “The environment where you are at work is really critical to attracting and retaining talent.”
Overall the panel emphasized that credit unions needed to be open to changing business practices and strategies to hire top talent tech.
“A key takeaway is if you are in situation today that you are unhappy about you don’t have to stay stuck there,” said moderator James Robert Lay, CEO of Digital Growth Institute. “It is also about measuring progress you are making on this journey and not worrying about perfection.”
Brad Kelley, assistant vice president of IT at Elements Financial in Indianapolis, noted that many credit unions use the same internal systems, so employees have skills that can be utilized by other institutions. This allows them to easily move jobs.
“They can go anywhere they want,” he added. “There isn’t the mentality among your employees that this is the last job I’ll ever have. You need an organization that helps retain those employees and help them grow and want to stay there because they will get those phones calls [from recruiters.]”
To counteract this, credit unions must invest in employees, he added. The $1.7 billion-asset Elements does this by paying for professional certifications, conferences and continuing education for employees, Kelley said in an interview after the panel.
“That should be more table stakes,” he added.
The $1.8 billion-asset CAP COM Federal Credit Union in Albany, N.Y., has rethought the traditional 9-to-5 work day, said Jason Greco, chief technology officer. For example, employees may choose to come in later in the morning and then stay later in the day to accommodate getting kids to school or going to an appointment.
“That’s probably the No. 1 benefit to provide to employees,” Greco said. “It’s a powerful tool.”
Greco, who previously spent five years at Goldman Sachs, also encouraged the audience to rethink using products from third-party vendors without any modifications.
“I was very struck when I first started [by] how little customization happened in house,” said Greco, who joined CAP COM about a year ago. “It’s really hard to attract the best talent to essentially support third-party products.”
But not everyone in the audience seemed convinced. One attendee asked whether more in-house customization was realistic for most credit unions.
Greco acknowledged it was a complicated issue, and credit unions didn’t need to write an entire online banking system “from the ground up.” But he emphasized that there were vendors that would allow for more flexibility in using their products and that would allow institutions to “extend those frameworks in ways that were neat and different.” If customization doesn’t happen, then the credit union’s digital footprint can look similar to its competitors.
“You have to strike a balance,” Greco said.
Still, credit unions have one important advantage over other industries – their mission-driven nature, Kelley said during an interview after the panel.
“It’s people with a purpose,” he added. “It’s having a great culture different from banks and other companies but also having flexibility. You’ll have better employees.”
