Inspirational Leadership, The Start Of The Movement!
Have your weekends changed recently? Have you been hearing the roar of the crowd at a stadium or been glued to the TV watching your favorite college football or NFL team? Whether your team is a consistent winner or scrappy underdog, you can only hope they have some form of motivation to keep or get them going. I personally like to think their coach gives them this inspiration.
At United Federal Credit Union, we have been focusing on grooming our team to take on more outside of their comfort zones. Has it felt like 4th and long at times? ABSOLUTLEY! But that is when you go to your playbook, pull out that special play and practice it to perfection.
Our strategic plan has been to grow talent from within and promote the UFCU culture. Over the past year during this project, I have been able to promote 61% of the 33 employees who directly or indirectly report to me. This does not necessarily mean they moved from one position to another, but also includes those who have moved up a level in their current role.
Take a quick look back at that last paragraph. 61% of the staff has had a significant pay raise because they went above their expectations and broke out of their comfort zones. I checked my math twice and even triple-checked with our excellent Human Resources team, and each time the results of that inspiring statistic are the same – 100% accurate.
You might be asking yourself, did this cost the credit union any money? Sure! Employees are one of the biggest expenses at any credit union, but the value they provide to our Members, our company and our community is well worth the cost. Our loans, deposits, Member service scores and employee satisfaction scores are all up year after year.
In fact, our employee satisfaction scores are up so much UFCU was nominated as one of the Best Places to Work in Arkansas. Not only were we nominated, we were recognized as one of the Top 12 Best Places to Work (all businesses, all sizes) in Arkansas by Arkansas Business. This was a two part scoring process with 25% of the total coming from the benefits provided to the employees and the other 75% coming from an employee survey. We had an overall rating of 96%!
http://www.arkansasbusiness.com/article/100850/united-federal-aims-national-but-values-local
Do we still have room to improve? Of course! You can never stop learning. The key is to find inspiration from unlikely sources. I recently came across a video clip of a high school running back’s post-game interview and was impressed by his motivational words.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X7ymriMhoj0
Be INSPIRED, don’t give up and understand we are a cooperative of People helping People!
Inspirational Leadership, Advocacy and Mentorship
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