Jul 5, 2011 by Tim McAlpine I’m in for life!
Credit Union Management Magazine
Editor’s Note: This is Web-only bonus coverage from “Fired up for Life or Just for Now?” in the July 2011 issue of Credit Union Management.
It’s not all doom and gloom. While I've noticed that a bunch of the young folks I follow on Twitter have moved on from the credit union industry, for some young professionals, a career with credit unions is a career for life. It’s not surprising to learn that young people who find a credit union that is open to their ideas and lets them run with them are far more likely to stay.
“I have a voice and I see myself as part of the solution.” Matt Vance, a CUES Next Gen member and marketing/community manager at $139 million/21,000-member Industrial Credit Union, Bellingham, Wash., says, “My credit union was the first to give me a shot right out of college. I was handed the keys to a marketing department at the age of 24. I’ve had an amazing opportunity to learn, try new things and fail and grow over the past five years.
“The freedom I’ve been given has had a huge impact on why I stay. I’m not micro-managed and I am allowed the ability to make the strategic and creative decisions for my department. I also feel like my opinion matters and is used in strategic decisions. This has greatly helped improve my confidence, decision-making ability and knowledge of credit union management. I truly believe what I do has an impact on my organization and the lives of our members. Without this feeling it would be hard to stick around.”
“I see tremendous opportunities to grow.” To some young professionals, the size of the credit union has played an important part in how they see their future. It appears that those from larger credit unions see more opportunities for a life-long career, even in a merger-filled industry.
CUES Next Gen member Devin Selte, senior relationship manager/team lead/business banking at $10 billion/400,000-member Servus Credit Union, Lloydminster, Alberta, offers these insights: “Over my past 12 years with the same credit union, I believe my career has had three phases: employed, acceleration and purpose. The employed phase lasted probably the first two or three years of employment (20 to 22 years of age). At that time, I would say that my position was just a job, with a steady pay check, rather than a career.
“The acceleration phase started when I figured out I was pretty good at what I was doing. Over those five to six years (23 to 28), I found my niche, and wanted more, and I wanted it as fast as possible. I was lucky enough to quickly accelerate into roles with greater responsibility by being in the right place at the right time. If I didn’t accelerate through my position and had to wait for opportunities, I would have become impatient and frustrated, and I don’t know if I would have remained. Money was very important at this time as during this phase I was married, bought our first home and had our first child.
“My current phase, and hopefully a phase that will last the longest of my career, is the purpose phase. I have been allowed to bring some of my own innovation to the credit union and run with it. This, added with my current role, has provided me with a greater purpose and it has made all the difference. It has allowed me to be more engaged, more committed and wanting to do more for my credit union, along with providing me with the motivation to do a better job in my current role. By being provided with these types of additional opportunities and responsibilities, I do believe I will be a lifer.
“With that being said, that lifer title could change pretty quickly. If I no longer felt I was being challenged in my position, had limited opportunities to continue to progress, my greater purpose was no longer available to me or I moved to a different phase of my career, it’s hard to say if I would continue on.”
“My person values align with my credit union.” William Azaroff, director/digital and community engagement at $14 billion/400,000-member Vancity, Vancouver, British Columbia, had this to say: “I don’t think age or size of organization has anything to do with it. I think the fact that my personal values are so aligned with the mission of Vancity is instrumental and perhaps completely unique. For me, that is the critical ingredient.”
Azaroff is not alone; the attraction to the overarching cooperative, people-helping-people philosophy is a common thread through those who see themselves in it for the long haul.
Vance adds, “The philosophical difference is the main reason why I consider myself to be a ‘lifer.’ Day in and day out, we do the right thing; the products I help create or the promotions I come up with are all centered around our members and making their financial outlooks better. I never thought that would mean so much to me, but it does. We’re not a social services organization that is struggling to find the next grant or government funding to keep their doors open; we’re a smart, conservative business that earns a profit but returns it to our owners—it’s that simple.”
“Most young adults in credit unions have no idea about the opportunities that exist in our industry.” CUES Next Gen member Kelsey Balcaitis, community education specialist at $763 million/85,000-member A+ Federal Credit Union, Austin, Texas, feels that her decision to stick with credit unions has largely been shaped by opportunities and exposure to the big picture. “I’ve been with credit unions for seven years and I’d like to consider myself a ‘lifer,’ but it’s hard for me to even say where I’ll be a year from now. But I do think that whatever I do with my life, credit unions will either be a part of it or have a strong influence on it.
“When I started, I was a teller and it was just a way to earn money for college. But it was through that job that I was first exposed to the credit union philosophy. Did it really sink in and make me a credit union lifer? Nope. But it did open the door to becoming one.
“It wasn’t until I started my internships with CUNA and Filene that I really started to see what credit unions were doing and what the industry was all about. I remember going to a Credit Union Development Educator presentation and graduation while I was at CUNA and found myself intrigued to learn more. But without these internship and experiences, I can’t honestly say I’d still be in the credit union industry.
“Even though I think there are a lot of great opportunities for young adults out there, I would venture to guess that most young adults in credit unions have no idea they even exist. And why is that? They’re not exposed, they can’t access the websites to view them, they’re not encouraged to take advantage of them or they simply don’t care. How many tellers are involved in the Next Top Credit Union Exec? Or the Crash Network? Not a lot. But those are the young adults that need the encouragement to stay in the industry.”
“People are yearning for something more.” Some young professionals are committed to the credit union movement even though they no longer work at credit unions. Consulting used to be reserved for retired CEOs and executives looking to use the skills and experience of a 25-plus-year career. But now there is a whole new breed of young professional consultant working in the credit union industry.
Tina K. Hall, the CUES 2010 Next Top Credit Union Executive and former VP/chief human resource officer at $371 million/26,000-member Verity Credit Union, Seattle, has recently joined the consulting side of the credit union industry. She is now president and chief catalyst of Kirsi Consultancy.
“After 14 years in the industry, beginning as an unpaid volunteer and ending as a vice president, I felt called to do something different. It took me two days and three meetings with my CEO to actually resign my role. I was that afraid of taking the leap. My credit union had been so good to me. My CEO believed in me before I believed in myself. And I know this to be true by the actions he took. Not just in sending me to conferences, but including me in new groups or as a co-creator of our strategy. He cared. In the end I remember saying to him, ‘I know I’m holding on like a security blanket. And what I really want ... what I need ... I guess what I feel is ...’ He finished the sentence, ‘you need to make a bigger difference.’
“Exactly. The fact that he could finish that sentence is the difference in my experience compared to others that leave the industry. He cared. And it showed.
“There is an African philosophy summarized in the single word ‘Ubuntu,’ which translates roughly to ‘I am because you are.’ I think if more people owned the interconnection that we have in creating and developing each other, we wouldn’t be talking about losing good leaders. We all have a role every single day.
“I think people are yearning for something more. What keeps them in credit unions is the philosophical alignment with the ‘betterment’ concept. We can push the boundaries and get more creative in how we translate that concept to the employee.”
Young credit union employees should take caution. While consulting may seem like an attractive path, there is only so much room in this space. In fact, having young consultants to look up to may be having a negative effect on those stuck in a job they aren’t loving. A young male marketer who recently left a $90 million/13,000 member credit union for a career in another industry and wanted to be anonymous had this to say, “What I found is that if you are not an outside consultant, credit unions or associations won’t listen to you. The powers that be almost always wait until an outsider tells them what to do. This is so frustrating.”
Keep the Fires Burning
Matt Davis, applied research, innovation implementation director at the Filene Research Institute, Madison, Wis., offers this advice to today’s credit union leaders: “Attracting and retaining young talent to our system requires more than just matching them with just any credit union. We need to make sure that we match the best and the brightest with the credit unions that share youth’s insatiable appetite for progress, philanthropy and experimentation.”
Jill Nowacki’s experience seems to prove that point. Nowacki, VP/development at $363 million/39,000-member Maps Credit Union, Salem, Ore., has had a fast-paced credit union career filled with support and opportunity, “I have had three very different careers with different organizations within credit unions [over a] decade. I’m a credit union lifer, but I haven’t mastered credit union monogamy, I guess.
“You asked if there is an issue with the way the credit union industry treats its young professionals. I’ve experienced that the credit union industry treats its young employees better than what I have seen my friends experience in other industries. The recognition programs, the opportunities and the emphasis placed on the importance of new ideas are prevalent throughout the industry.
“That said, what an industry is able to do very well is hard for individual organizations (credit union or otherwise) to pull off. As an industry, we have identified that leadership must be cultivated, succession planning must take place and we must tap the energy and passion from the next generation. As individual organizations, it isn’t often possible to build an organizational structure around high-performing individual employees, regardless of age.
“I have had incredible, entirely positive opportunities with credit unions and have still chosen to leave two organizations because I felt limited. At the time, I did feel frustration with my managers. If I was as good at my job as they said, why didn’t I have more influence? Even at the time, even with those frustrations, I would not say I quit either of my previous bosses, though. I knew what the organizational limitations were; I just felt like the industry had other opportunities that could keep me more inspired and more engaged. It seemed like it was my responsibility to go get that next opportunity.
“Each time I pursued a next step, I used a network to help me get there. Undoubtedly, my network is a product of the many opportunities the industry makes available to young professionals. I have definitely grown with each career step I have taken, but I cannot imagine outgrowing the credit union industry.
“As an individual, it’s easy to see the ceiling that is above you within one organization. Hopefully what the credit union industry is doing collectively—and in my opinion is doing well—is enough to help individuals see the wide open spaces that exist outside of their individual organizations, keeping a next generation of credit union employees on fire, engaged and prepared to take on our next leadership positions within the individual organizations of the credit union industry.”
“Unless the two parties can meet in the middle, is there any surprise that these relationships end in divorce?” Davis adds these observations: “In many cases when we’ve seen young talent leave the system it wasn’t a mismatch between the individual and credit unions. Instead, it was a mismatch between idealism and reality or one person and another.”
Azaroff adds, “I think there are two sides to this story and the truth, like in most cases, is somewhere in the middle.
“In any organization focused on a specific product or service, if you are not working on something directly tied to the traditional creation or distribution of that product or service, you’re outside the mainstream,” he says. “Many of the employees that have left the credit union industry were innovators or instigators, pushing the boundaries of what their credit union was doing.
“If you’re going to play that role, you have to have the perspective and self-awareness to know it and expect to be a few years ahead of the rest of your organization, including, in some cases, the executive. If you don’t realize that, the employee’s energy and passion can easily calcify into frustration and impatience. An engaged employee is a couple of hard landings away from being disengaged.”
Azaroff continues, “As well, credit unions who have these special employees need to recognize them and find ways to keep them engaged, to help them realize that the glacial pace a credit union can sometimes move at is a downside of their role and to find balance. Unless the two parties can meet in the middle, is there any surprise that these relationships end in divorce?”
It’s Not About the Money
In all of my conversations with these young credit union professionals, money rarely came up. After all of these conversations, I’ve concluded that there are a number of common elements that are needed to keep our next generation leaders fired up for life rather than just for now. They want:
- a credit union that believes in innovation and free thinking;
- a superior who they respect;
- to believe that they are part of something bigger than just their own credit union;
- continued educational opportunities;
- a personal passion and purpose that aligns with credit unions;
- room to try new things;
- opportunities for growth; and
- an obvious path for advancement.
If you can offer most of these elements, then finding and keeping your young talent will be a whole lot easier.
