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Win-Win

Every year new buzzwords float around the business world. Words like mindfulness, employee engagement, culture, impact, etc. We think you should also familiarize yourself with a few that are top of mind at Filene – transparency, trust and fair treatment. 

Every year new buzzwords float around the business world. Words like mindfulness, employee engagement, culture, impact, etc. We think you should also familiarize yourself with a few that are top of mind at Filene – transparency, trust and fair treatment.

Transparency, trust and fair treatment are the pillars of our three-part research series on open-book management.  Using these three pillars, the open-book management strategy engages with employees in a way that gets them to think and act like owners, creating a culture of employee ownership in credit unions. 

Sure, this seems like it would make sense, but what is different about open-book management?  Can’t you just make it happen with trust alone? Do you have to incorporate all three pillars? Even if you do, how can open-book management make a noticeable difference for your credit union?

Let’s break it down.

  • When we’re transparent, every employee sees the relevant financial numbers leading them to a fuller understanding of the organization’s financial position.
  • If everyone is looking at the same information, trust will grow between employees and their managers and vice versa.
  • Once that trust is established, everyone begins to take ownership and keep the credit union’s interest at the forefront.
  • Resulting in everyone sharing the responsibility for success, and ultimately everyone sharing in the reward

It’s a win-win.

An organization’s objective shouldn’t be to improve performance in any way possible. It should be to deliver products and services that people truly need, to create value by doing so, and to share that value with everyone who helped build it. (The Power of  Engagement Through Open-Book Management)

Be intentional about turning those buzzwords into a winning solution for your credit union. Creating a loyal and engaged workforce will drive long term success within your credit union.

By engaging and empowering employees to meet the organization’s goals, you’ll deliver more value and better service to your credit union members. With more value and better service, your credit union will surely grow.(The Practice of Open-Book Management in Credit Unions)

Join the conversation this month

If you’re ready to start putting open-book management into practice right away, there are still spots open for our June 14th Research in Action event, Skin In the Game. At this event, we will take a deep dive into the concept of open-book management and learn how to structure your credit union to manifest a culture primed for open-book management, understand how fostering empathy as part of your service delivery affects the culture of an organization and hear from experts on the reality of making open-book management work in credit unions. Join us at Harvard University!