Talent attraction and retention is not a new challenge for many credit unions. But the changes that took place across the industry as a result of COVID-19 accelerated and intensified underlying issues in finding and keeping high-performing employees and leaders with the right skills and culture fit. In a 2021 Filene report, Filene Fellow Sekou Bermiss showed that one thing was clear: credit unions must evolve their workplace practices to keep up in attracting and retaining top talent. In an updated report two years later, Dr. Bermiss along with co-author Doug Leighton confirmed this finding, emphasizing the importance of hybrid work at the core of building trust between leaders and staff.
Today, however, hybrid work is just one of many questions credit unions are looking to solve as they navigate the labor market and talent landscape. What do successful talent attraction and retention policies look like? What training and development do credit union employees need? How should credit unions train the next generation of emerging leaders? And how can credit unions tackle these questions using their current resources and budget?
For one organization, all these questions pointed to the need to get creative in innovating new talent solutions for credit unions.
CUWLA and Filene
In 2024, the Credit Union Women’s Leadership Alliance (CUWLA) and Filene Research Institute embarked on a journey to find solutions to the workforce and talent attraction challenges many credit unions face. The CUWLA Innovators for this project were women CEOs from smaller credit unions (typically less than the $300 million asset range), but the solutions they tested are not only applicable but potentially transformative for all credit unions, regardless ogf size.
Using Filene’s Method of Innovation, CUWLA’s Innovators created four working groups with the freedom to choose which talent question they would try to solve. This was to be an iterative process—none of the questions the teams were looking to solve had (or have) easy solutions. Ideas would need to be surfaced, answers revised, plans and prototypes adjusted. But the CUWLA Innovators were ready: through research, each team created connections to build empathy with their constituents; each team then prototyped and tested potential solutions; and finally each team pitched their ideas to a room filled with executive leaders to further refine their solutions.
What did we learn?
- People drive organizational performance at organizations of all sizes—but the smaller the organization, the more important it is to have the right people in the right roles.
- There is a growing gap at many credit unions due to challenges in attracting, retaining, and developing high-performing team members. The present and future success of credit unions depends on solving this “talent question.”
- Credit unions must work together not only to identify solutions but scale them efficiently. The network effect of credit unions working together on talent is real and can help overcome some of the cost and operational burden of implementing talent solutions.
Below we discuss the four potential solutions created by the CUWLA Innovators.
History of The Filene Method
The Filene Method was developed in partnership with IDEO in 2012. Since then, the Method has been integrated into several key offerings from Filene, including Innovation Groups—a proven innovation curriculum for the credit union industry—and the i3 program—Filene's innovation leadership program.
- In 2022, Cornerstone League participated in a Filene Innovation Group that resulted in multiple credit unions walking away with concrete business plans and concept documents for new products and services for their organizations. Some examples included Champion Accounts that offered a single account to help manage spending and expenses, the CUxChange Program to help tackle student loan debt, and a Business in a Box solution for small business entrepreneurs.
- Last year, i3 innovation teams tackled some of the more challenging problems in the industry today, from managing buy now pay later, educating members on cryptocurrency to supporting credit unions’ front-line employees. Explore their work in more detail here!
Four Questions, Four Possible Solutions
Conversations across the following solutions are ongoing. We are sharing them today to showcase some of the conversations currently happening in the credit union industry and, hopefully, inspire new connections.
Talent development and succession planning are two sides of the same coin. Many credit unions who struggle with one have found they face challenges with the other, as difficulties in finding and retaining successful, long-term employees inevitably leads to gaps with in identifying future credit union leaders and, ultimately, succession planning. But credit unions have a unique strength in the power of connections across credit unions. Indeed, through our work with the Cooperative Trust, we have seen that when many high-performing credit union team members do search out new job opportunities, they prefer to go to another credit union or stay in the credit union industry.
This realization led one CUWLA Innovator team to create the concept of the CU Career Compass app. The CU Career Compass app provides career direction and guidance for any individual staff member—not only at their credit union but across the industry. The app would provide access to an industry’s worth of networks, resources, and guidance, providing the tools a user needs for a career in the credit union industry.
Time and time again, we hear about the desire for connection across the credit union industry. For both current and emerging leaders, these opportunities often occur at conferences and roadshows, but we have also heard of desires for quicker, easier ways to access resources and make connections—and CUWLA Innovators agreed, drawing on their own experiences as women executives who value the opportunity to connect with and support one another.
The second CUWLA Innovator team created the idea for the Credit Union Village. This virtual resource would offer a safe place for credit union leaders (and emerging leaders) to share resources, ideas, recommendations, stories, etc. to help each other. The types of resources in such a resource could include training, information, networking opportunities, templates, or just inspirational stories to help develop emerging leaders at their credit unions.
Credit union executives from credit unions of all sizes are busy. Their time is limited, and when they have questions, their time to find those answers is limited.
Another of the CUWLA Innovator teams proposed a possible solution: CURx. This platform would offer expert care and support tailored for credit union CEOs, to help them tackle both organizational and operational questions and their own individual challenges. The vision for this platform would be to offer prescriptive, personalized solutions. This could include customized action plans based on unique needs, leveraging expert insights from across the industry. One idea discussed was involving retired credit union CEOs in this effort as well, leveraging their years of experience in the industry as mentors for other CEOs. This platform could also act as a sounding board for executives across the country as they seek to learn from one another.
The smaller the credit union team, the larger the challenge of providing the resources needed to develop internal career pathways and plans for employees. Developed with smaller credit unions in mind, this idea could prove a key conversation starter for credit unions of all sizes, because talent development is a need across the industry.
The Leadership Development Journey was proposed by another CUWLA Innovator team as a game-changing solution designed to empower smaller credit unions to cultivate the next generation of leaders without the need for extensive resources. This innovative program would provide a structured, scalable approach to leadership development by combining the ability to determine specific training needs for high potential leaders with specific, tailored training suggestions.
So what’s next?
Building a workforce of the future—including attracting, training, developing, and retaining key talent—is a goal for many credit union leaders. In an industry facing an incredible amount of change through retirements, promotions, and mergers, talent is top of mind. These proposed solutions are still under discussion—and they are likely to undergo changes. But regardless of whether these solutions above will come to fruition in the exact format they were initially envisioned in, it’s critical to highlight what they have already achieved: the identification of shared challenges and conversations about new ideas.
Innovation is the thread that tethers ideas to action. If credit unions can connect that action to strategy, they have an opportunity to realize critical organizational goals. CUWLA is seizing that opportunity, and while the ideas above were just Step 1, we look forward to seeing what’s next on the horizon.
–CA
