West #7: Tina Hall
Tina Hall is a 35-year-old Vice President, Organizational Development with Verity Credit Union ($380M) in Seattle, Washington.
Synopsis: The current market has created an unprecedented opportunity for credit unions.
Each week, every week, since October 2008, at least one bank has failed. While the dark clouds of media outrage continues to blast bankers, a ray of light shines on a better way to manage our money.
Credit unions offer hope in a time of fear.
At this time, our most engaged employees will cultivate our most engaged members. As a result, we will emerge from this Great Recession safe, sound, and strong.
In order to yield this result, our comprehensive human resource strategy must utilize multiple dimensions of talent management.
It is important for us to recruit employees passionate about the cooperative model. We must retain our highest caliber employees as the recessionary market turns. Because after that next community bank fails, it will be our finest employees that use their experiences to gain us additional market share.
In other words: the credit union with best talent will win.
I think the sexy for-profit companies have it wrong, to a certain extent. We all read about them in Fast Company or other journals: the amazing on-site fitness facilities or free meal options. These benefits help create an interesting career.
My theory is most employees crave an interesting life.
So there is an opportunity to offer something more to employees. More than the volley ball court, more than a typical skills-based training, more than just money. For my CUES Next Top Credit Union Executive project, I am excited to shape a talent strategy that taps in to what is most important to each employee: creating an interesting life.
This program begins with approximately 28 hours of learning over the course of twelve weeks. The learning is intense, experiential, and challenging. And, as a trainer in the credit union industry for 11 years, it’s not your typical credit union program. It goes deeper. It’s followed up with twelve weeks of one-on-one coaching. The coaching is something different from sales coaching, mentoring, or life coaching. It’s a hybrid model. I wish I had a name for it. All I can say is I’ve tried this on a very small pilot group and am seeing fantastic results. I’d love to share them with you over the course of this competition. I strive to foster an environment of development that is so juicy the next generation of leaders comes to view credit unions as a preferred place to work.
Our movement needs employee advocates now more than ever. So please vote for this project so we can grow together.
