Return-to-Office Strategies, Major Credit Union Mergers, and Revamping Employee Onboarding
In this episode of Grow Your Credit Union, hosts Joshua Barclay and Becky Reed welcome on guest Shawn Premer, Chief Human Resources Officer at Consumers Credit Union to discuss the push for returning to the office, the implications of a major credit union merger, and the challenges of employee onboarding in the modern workplace.
Return to Office Policies
As a credit union leader, it's essential to assess how remote work impacts your organization's culture and collaboration. While remote setups can maintain individual productivity, they may hinder teamwork and the innovative spirit crucial for success. "What we were finding was, while people can be great individual contributors at home, it's very difficult from a collaboration and culture standpoint for us to work together," explains Shawn Premer. Recognizing this, Consumers Credit Union asked employees to make the office their primary work location again.
The results have been positive. "Our engagement really has reflected positively since making that decision [to return to the office]," Shawn notes, emphasizing improved employee morale and teamwork. However, the approach isn't one-size-fits-all. Becky Reed points out, "I think you've got to look at the role and decide what works best for your organization." Tailoring your work policies to fit different roles can help balance flexibility with the need for in-person collaboration, ensuring both organizational goals and employee satisfaction are met.
Implications of a Major Credit Union Merger
With First Technology Federal Credit Union and Digital Federal Credit Union planning to merge in 2025, creating a nearly $29 billion entity, credit union leaders must consider the broader implications. Such large-scale mergers may offer growth but also raise concerns about regulatory scrutiny and the credit union industry's identity. Shawn warns, "If it looks like a bank, it smells like a bank, it's going to start to feel like a bank, and they're going to tax us like banks." This blurring of lines could lead to increased regulatory burdens, particularly affecting smaller credit unions.
Becky challenges the notion that mergers are the only path to growth, stating, "We have been convinced as an industry that the only way to achieve economies of scale is through asset growth. And I don't subscribe to that philosophy." She advocates for leveraging technology to achieve efficiency and growth without sacrificing the cooperative principles that set credit unions apart. "If you can get more efficient, then you can really double down on increasing your member value," Becky adds. As a leader, consider alternative strategies like technological innovation to drive growth while maintaining your credit union's unique identity.
Overhauling Employee Onboarding
Effective onboarding is crucial for employee retention and organizational success, yet many credit unions fall short in this area. Shawn highlights a common pitfall: "We have to get this person in today... Let's bring them in, throw them a computer, give them a handbook, and set them on their way." This rushed approach can leave new hires feeling unsupported and disengaged. Instead, Shawn emphasizes that onboarding should be an extended process: "Onboarding in our environment is a 12-month process... you're always still onboarding an employee."
Becky suggests reimagining traditional training methods to focus more on relationship-building and continuous learning. "I think that our training process actually needs to be reimagined," she says. In remote or hybrid work environments, fostering connections is even more critical. "People need relationships... whether that relationship happens remotely or it happens in person," Shawn adds. As a credit union leader, investing in a comprehensive, relationship-focused onboarding program can enhance employee satisfaction and reduce turnover, ultimately strengthening your organization.
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FULL TRANSCRIPT
Joshua Barclay: Credit union community, welcome to the show. Here are the three topics we'll cover today. First up, corporate CEOs want their workers back inside the offices full-time. Will credit union leaders follow suit? Next up, First Technology Credit Union and Digital Federal Credit Union announced their plans to merge in 2025, but does this merger set a dangerous precedent in the credit union industry?
And finally, we tackle the broken process of employee onboarding and explore how to fix it. Welcome to "Grow Your Credit Union." This is the podcast where credit union leaders gather, learn, and grow. I am your host, Joshua Barclay, and with me is my co-host, the talk of Texas, a.k.a. the DeFi Queen. I'm talking about Becky Reed. Becky, hello.
Becky Reed: Howdy, y'all.
Joshua Barclay: Becky, talk to me a little bit about the Waymo experience. So for those listening, I'd never seen this before, but in Phoenix, I was driving in my Uber, and my driver tells me to look across the street where I see a car driving people, but there's no driver.
This was a driverless taxi in Phoenix. I didn't know they existed. Becky, you actually hopped in one while you were in Phoenix. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Becky Reed: I'm known for not being very risk-averse, right? So I was like, "I'll do it. Absolutely." So we went out to dinner with some clients, and I was like, "I'm going to take one of these Waymos back home." So one of my colleagues and I jumped in the back of one, and it was very interesting. It came to pick you up.
It parked in front of the restaurant, and on the top of it, it had a rolling screen of the initials of the person who ordered it. So you download the Waymo app, just like you would with Uber, and it knows that you're there. It knows your name, and it knows, of course, where you're going. And when you get in the vehicle, it knows it's you because of the app you have on your phone.
So that's how it knows that you're the one who ordered it. It only took side roads; it did not take the highway. But we went—probably it was about a 40-minute trip or so because they didn't take the highway. So it took a little bit longer, but it was half the price of an Uber. And we both sat in the back.
We could choose the music we listened to, the ambience inside of the vehicle. There was like a Q&A on there on "What happens if... What happens if you get pulled over? Really? A police officer's gonna pull over a Waymo? What do you even do if that happens?"
Joshua Barclay: Real question, Becky: Did you feel safe?
Becky Reed: I was totally fine. It didn't bother me at all.
Joshua Barclay: Okay, listen, just for the record, I'm not super comfortable getting in a self-driving car right now at all. Let's bring on today's guest. We have the Chief Human Resources Officer at Consumers Credit Union, Shawn Premer. Shawn, welcome to "Grow Your Credit Union."
Shawn Premer: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. I will say I'm also a Tesla driver, and I don't like the autonomous driving, so I know I would not get into a self-driving vehicle with no driver.
Joshua Barclay: When it comes to the future of remote work, the corporate CEOs have spoken loud and clear: They want you back inside the office full-time. A recent survey from KPMG shows that nearly 80 percent of U.S. CEOs now expect corporate employees to return to the workplace within the next three years. And on top of that, 86 percent of those CEOs are planning to reward employees who come into the office with better assignments, raises, and promotions.
Shawn, as corporate CEOs begin pushing their employees back into the office, do you think credit union leaders will feel pressure to follow suit? Or do you see a different path forward for credit unions?
Shawn Premer: This is an interesting question for me in particular because we've been back in the office for about a year. We have a beautiful corporate headquarters here in Kalamazoo, Michigan. We've got a campus with a gym and pickleball courts and walking trails. So we have this beautiful facility that we built in 2017.
And about a year ago, we asked our employees to make this their primary work location again. So it doesn't mean they can't work remote; we just ask that they don't do it on a hybrid schedule, that they do it when they need to—when they need the flexibility for their family or for their life. Obviously, they can take it, but this really is our primary work location. So that's an interesting question for me because we've been back at it for about a year.
Joshua Barclay: And have you seen a performance difference in your employees? Because this is what I always wonder is, the thing about the CEOs wanting employees back in the office—it feels very much like you want to micromanage me. It feels very much like you were uncomfortable with the idea that you couldn't observe me all the time in my cubicle. Now you want me back in, but it feels a little almost irrational. So my question to you is, have you noticed a significant difference in performance since you've told everyone to come back to the office?
Shawn Premer: I don't know that it's a difference in performance as much as it is a difference in our culture. So what we were finding was, while people can be great individual contributors at home, it's very difficult from a collaboration and culture standpoint for us to work together. And so if I'm working in the silo where I'm focused at home and I'm getting my work done and I get large quantities of work done, but I'm not collaborating with my teammates in a meaningful way, then our culture of innovation and collaboration starts to suffer.
So that's where we were. It wasn't about productivity; work was getting done. It was more about us seeing our employee engagement numbers starting to falter as people worked in silos. They didn't feel like their teammates were as supportive as they could be. They didn't feel like they had that camaraderie that we used to have.
And so when we made the decision to come back into the office, it was really primarily about that. Secondary was the fact that more than half of our employees are working in a retail location every single day, and they have to show up for work, and they felt a lack of service and engagement from the rest of us that are really primarily here to serve them and help them serve our members.
So that was our decision behind it, and our engagement really has reflected positively since making that decision.
Joshua Barclay: Wow. I like that—the engagement. Yep, of course. Seems obvious now when you say it. Becky, corporate CEOs pulling out that whip—they want us back in the office. But in terms of credit unions, Becky, should credit union leaders be making a push to say, "Hey, everybody. Let's get back in here"?
Becky Reed: I think it depends, right? I think that every credit union looks a little bit different. Every credit union's culture is a little bit different. Some credit unions are very close to each other from a retail branch perspective; they're all within a 10-mile or 20-mile radius, whereas other credit unions might have branches in completely different states or hundreds of miles apart.
And so I think it's different. What I can say that I have learned, because I was all in on the remote thing, right? We remodeled our headquarters at Lone Star Credit Union specifically to ensure that people were remote first. We didn't even have enough offices or desks for everybody in the headquarters.
And so we went from that environment to now I work at a startup, right? A fintech startup. And I can tell you that doing something in a financial institution that is fairly static—and what I mean by that is we've already figured it out, right? We have policies, we have procedures, we have regulatory requirements. That stuff is already figured out. We're not trying to reinvent the wheel as far as how we run our business.
But if you're in a startup fintech, you are figuring that out on the fly, and trying to figure it out on the fly remotely is challenging because things change all the time, and something might happen and we're like, "Oh, we hadn't thought about that. How are we going to do that? What is our process for that?" And doing that in person is absolutely the right way to do that because stuff pops up; we gather everybody around real quick and say, "How are we going to tackle this problem? How are we going to decide to do this?" We make a decision, we huddle up, and we do a high five and go back and we do it.
It's not that way at a financial institution who's been doing financial institution things for a hundred years, right? So it is a different environment. So my comment is it depends. Credit unions should do what's best for them and ultimately what's best for their members.
Joshua Barclay: Shawn, Chief Human Resources Officer, you are in charge of a lot of things, one of them being the acquisition and retention of talent. So one of the things that I immediately was wondering is credit unions are constantly on the hunt for younger employees. And the remote thing seems to be a very enticing little perk.
So naturally, I'm wondering, do you think that can hurt when you're looking for younger talent by not providing more flexibility in terms of the environment that they can and can't work at?
Shawn Premer: Actually, no, we haven't seen a negative impact. Yeah, so it's hard to say what the future brings. I will say, though, that primarily the younger people that we hire are going into our entry-level jobs, which might be our MSC or our digital teller line. And they do have the ability to work remote just a little bit more because their jobs are so production-oriented—what you said, right? It depends on the role.
So they have the ability to work from home two days a week or a third day if they're the closer, since we're open till seven. So I think you've got to look at the role and decide what works best for your organization. And does it require the collaboration that we typically do in our operational jobs?
Joshua Barclay: With First Technology Federal Credit Union and Digital Federal Credit Union announcing their plans to merge in 2025—pending regulatory approval, of course—this consolidation could create the sixth-largest credit union in the U.S., overseeing $28.7 billion in assets and serving nearly 1.8 million members across the globe.
Now, this is a really controversial one, Shawn, Becky, because on LinkedIn, I can't believe how much criticism is being thrown at this particular subject. And people are arguing that this could lead to reduced competition, that it can hurt smaller credit unions. Shawn, let's kick things off with you. What do you think about the implications of this merger?
Shawn Premer: There's a lot from my perspective. So if I put on my executive hat, I think credit unions are always facing the challenge of regulation, right? Should we be taxable? Should we not be taxable? And I think that if it looks like a bank, it smells like a bank, it's going to start to feel like a bank, and they're going to tax us like banks, right? That's the reality.
So the bigger the credit unions get, the more they look and feel like banks. So I think there's that challenge there, which then would trickle down to the smaller credit unions, right? Because how are they going to survive in a heavy regulatory environment? We're already so heavily regulated, and then if you add more onto that because of these larger credit unions, eventually they'll have to merge in, right? They just won't be able to handle it from a financial standpoint, right? Regulatory burden is expensive, and small credit unions just don't have the resources.
I think also there's a talent challenge too, right? So how is the $250 million credit union going to be able to compete in a market where you have these larger credit unions? And we're a pretty large credit union—we're just under $3 billion in assets—so we're a pretty good-sized credit union. But we're not a $30 billion credit union, right? So I think there's still those challenges.
So am I against it? No, I'm not against it. But I think as we look at the future of the credit union world, it's going to get harder and harder for these small credit unions with two or three branches to be able to sustain strong business operations under the regulatory pressures that continue to grow.
Joshua Barclay: Becky, First Technology Federal Credit Union and Digital Federal Credit Union coming together. What are your thoughts?
Becky Reed: I agree with everything Shawn said. I also agree with a lot of the chatter that I'm seeing on social media. I think that one of the mistakes we make as human beings is to think that the way things are right now are going to continue the same way into the future and not change.
And so if you look at the trajectory of mergers right now, it's quite a concerning trend—not just in the credit union space but in the community banking space as well. And when you look at consolidation of other industries, you end up in some cases, of course, with less consumer choice because there are fewer institutions providing that service.
And then you start getting into these monolithic industries that maybe only have three players or in some cases have no competition, right? Because they've dominated the market. And that generally is not a good thing for consumers, whether it be banking services or otherwise.
My take on it is absolutely there's going to continue to be a consolidation. I don't believe that we're going to end up with three financial institutions here in the United States. I don't think that's ever going to be a thing. And the reason I don't think that's ever going to be a thing is because this whole open banking paradigm that the CFPB is really going to be pushing that revolves around consumer choice.
CFPB is going to, along with distributed ledger technology and some other disruptive technologies that are coming down the pike, is going to change the landscape for how financial institutions serve their members. And so I think that disruption is coming, but I think it's in a different place than where we're thinking.
Joshua Barclay: One thing that's not discussed enough is the idea that, for example, I was watching something about stock buybacks—all these corporations buying back their own stock. And basically one of the analysts was saying they're doing this because there's nowhere else to get growth. Capitalism has grown to this big behemoth where there's not that much room left for growth.
So with these mergers and acquisitions, could this be a little bit of the same thing, Shawn, where it's—we don't know where to go; there's not that much opportunity for us to grow. The easy thing to do—let's just merge.
Shawn Premer: Yeah, so again, my credit union is an anomaly. So we have one small merger in our history. It was like a 4,000-member credit union that the CEO wanted to retire. And our growth historically has been 18.5 percent year over year for the last 40 years, and in the last two years, it's been a little bit slower, but we're still looking at double-digit growth this year.
So we're an anomaly in that space where we're finding ways to grow. But I will say, as I talk to my credit union peers, that's the exact boat they're in. They get to the point where they feel they've saturated a market or their growth strategy is not working anymore, and they feel like merger is their only opportunity to do that.
And then you flip that, and you have these small credit unions who are struggling to stay afloat. They can't lend money because they don't necessarily have the resources, right? And we all know we grow through lending. They just get to the point where they feel like they need to merge in also in order to survive.
So I think that's the environment that we're in. I'm with you, though. I don't think it's coming to the point where we're only going to have 100 credit unions left. I think it's more so like most of the credit unions in our state that's our size or bigger—that's how they're growing is through merger and acquisition because it's the only opportunity that they feel like they have at this point.
Joshua Barclay: Close things out with you, Becky. Do you feel like this notion that mergers and acquisitions are the only way to go is a lazy move on behalf of many credit union leaders, and that there should be more fight in you? What do you think, Becky?
Becky Reed: We have been convinced as an industry that the only way to achieve economies of scale is through asset growth. And I don't subscribe to that philosophy. I have to say I once did; I no longer do. And the reason why I don't is that the credit union that I led was able to achieve economies of scale through the use of technology.
And as technology continues to advance and move forward, and it grows in capability and capacity exponentially year over year—if you're looking at a particular technology today and you're looking at it two years from now, it looks vastly different, and it has so much more functionality and capability than it did even just a couple of years ago.
And technology is advancing to the point where if credit unions can just take advantage of it, they can gain efficiencies, reduce their operating costs, and grow that way. Because if you have more resources—and that can be more capacity; it can be more funds, right? More money to spend. It doesn't necessarily have to be people or places that you have to grow.
If you can get more efficient, then you can really double down on increasing your member value.
Joshua Barclay: One thing that we talked about on this show—we've talked about it multiple times—onboarding. A couple of shows ago, we talked about how to onboard members. Now we're going to talk about employees because that's a big problem. And if you think I'm kidding, according to BambooHR, companies have just 44 days to make a lasting impression on new hires.
And there's another report that shows only 39 percent of employees actually find the onboarding process clear, with 32 percent in this survey saying that their onboarding was confusing and 22 percent of respondents calling it disorganized. Shawn, why do you think so many companies are missing the mark on effective employee onboarding?
Shawn Premer: It's interesting because I was reflecting heavily on this conversation. I went through my history and 30 years of doing what I do, and sometimes you fail and sometimes you succeed. And I think where it really misses the mark is when employers take the viewpoint of "We have to get this person in today."
And [a position] is failing, so we need to bring this person in. So let's bring them in, throw them a computer, give them a handbook, and set them on their way. That's this fast-moving environment that we're in, and that's where they really miss the mark because the reality is onboarding should go long beyond even 44 days.
Onboarding in our environment is a 12-month process. And then after the 12 months, I believe you're always still onboarding an employee, right? They're moving into new positions, they're advancing in their career, they're learning new skill sets. And as they do that, you have to do a great job as an employer keeping them engaged through that onboarding process. And you have to make sure that they feel prepared for any role that they're in.
So I think it's such this one-and-done, right? Let's do this one-day orientation and our employees will love us. What you train employees in one day, they keep for one hour, right? You just know that. So for us, it's more of let's look at our employee from a holistic standpoint and understand what people need to feel great about the environment they're in, the job they're doing, their teammates, their coworkers.
And so that's the approach that we've taken. And it's very formal for a 12-month process to say, "Here's Jane Smith, our new digital teller, and here are all the experiences that she's going to have in her first year. Here's her mentor that she's going to have side by side to help answer her questions, make her feel comfortable." So we have this built into our organization, and we do not veer from it because we feel it's that important, because our first-year turnover is darn near zero.
Not to say there's not circumstances where it happens because someone relocates, but people leaving because they don't feel like they know their job or they don't feel comfortable in the environment just really doesn't happen here.
Joshua Barclay: Becky, what's going on with employee onboarding? The stats are out there and they're not good. People are coming on board to organizations and they don't know what the heck they're doing for long periods of time. These companies are underestimating how long it actually takes for an employee to get their stuff together. Talk to me, Becky. Why?
Becky Reed: I think as an organization, we sometimes feel like we have to, from a training perspective, prepare that person to go and be 100 percent effective day one. So what that means is we have to try to fill their head with everything that they could possibly need to know to do their job.
And, yeah, Shawn's—yeah, you just can't do that. And she mentioned earlier that you spend eight hours with them; they retain an hour of it because it's just so much information. And many people learn best by doing, and some things you learn through situational examples. You cannot possibly train anybody for any job on how to do every possible scenario that they will ever encounter.
And we tend to also train like we do in school, right? Where you sit down, you memorize something, you take a test to show your proficiency, because that's how our education system works here in the United States. When actually we should be looking at their problem-solving skills. We should be looking at, do they have the resources they need to try to research a problem to find a resolution as opposed to knowing how to resolve it through experience.
So what she mentioned earlier was mentorship, understanding who to go to if you have a problem. And I'm going to go back to our first segment where we talked a little bit about the remote environment. And that is a challenge in the remote environment because people don't have a relationship with somebody in person that they feel like they can rely on whenever they have questions.
And it's hard in a remote environment, especially when you're new, to send an instant message to someone or send an email, or maybe you're on the phone, you're not able to call them. They might be busy. Whereas if you're in person, you can see them, you can make eye contact with them, you can have a 30-second conversation and get the information you need.
That's not as easy to do in a remote environment. So I think that our training process actually needs to be reimagined.
Joshua Barclay: I actually think it's funny you mention the remote thing because the onboarding—I don't even know if I want to call it onboarding. I think with remote work, the expectation—for example, I was hired right after COVID at a marketing agency, and I had to submit my resume via video. So I never met anybody. They hired me sight unseen, like in terms of never met anybody in real life.
There was no onboarding whatsoever. They expected me to know everything and, in fact, were frustrated with me because I didn't know everything right off the rip. So I do see the remote work causing huge problems with onboarding because you don't have that hands-on type of experience that you would in office. And I don't necessarily know I have a follow-up question to that. It's more of an example of maybe one of the big flaws with remote work.
Shawn Premer: People need relationships, right? In general, right? So whether that relationship happens remotely or it happens in person, I think the idea is that your employee is joining your family—or at least for us—and they're joining your family, and how would you treat any new family member, right? And so that relationship piece is so important.
And so being hired sight unseen with a video resume just killed me to the core. So I want to apologize for your experience, even though I had nothing to do with it. I feel like that's terrible.
Becky Reed: One of the things we did, Josh, is we actually had a different onboarding experience in a remote environment. So we required new folks and their boss and their teammates to come in and work together for a period of time in person so they could create those relationships.
Joshua Barclay: What an idea. Wow. Absolutely brilliant. That brings us to the end of the show. Shawn, do you have any final thoughts about any of the topics that we discussed today or just some parting words of wisdom for our listeners?
Shawn Premer: All the subjects that we talked about really just boiled down to what works for your organization in a way that engages your members and engages your talent. So you know what works for us may not work in every organization, but I think if you look at it through the lens of what's the experience of our member and what's the experience of our employee and how does it look and feel as they onboard with us or as they work with us long term, looking at it through that lens and making those right decisions for the people involved, for those stakeholders, is really the key to success—I think in any, really any organization, but especially any credit union.
Joshua Barclay: And if anybody wants to get a hold of you—say they're listening to this episode and they think, "I'd like to get in touch with Shawn"—how can they do that?
Shawn Premer: I think I'm really the only Shawn Premer, so you can reach out to me on LinkedIn, "Shawn Premer." I'm the only one. I also can be reached anytime via email at shawn.premer@consumerscu.org.
Joshua Barclay: Awesome. And is Consumers CU hiring right now, Shawn?
Shawn Premer: We are always hiring. As I said, we have fast organic growth. So if you're looking for an operational position or you're looking for a member service position, we are always hiring. And if you're interested in checking that out, you can find it at consumerscu.org/careers.
Joshua Barclay: Awesome. Becky, final thoughts or words of wisdom?
Becky Reed: Every organization really is about its people, right? At the end of the day, whether you're providing a service, you're manufacturing, whatever the case may be, it all revolves around the people who are making that business run. And credit unions are just such a people-oriented business because they're people-focused from their very core, right? The foundations of who they are revolves around people.
And if you get an opportunity to join a credit union as an employee, I would definitely recommend that you take that opportunity to do so. It's a great place to work and spend a career.
Joshua Barclay: And Becky, I know they can get ahold of you on LinkedIn—Becky Reed, LinkedIn—but maybe there's an event that you're going to soon that maybe they could catch you at too. What's your next appearance?
Becky Reed: I'll be in Colorado Springs for the NASCUS Summit. I'll be speaking there. I will also be at the Utah Credit Union Association Volunteer Summit in Park City, Utah, in your neck of the woods, Joshua, a little bit later this month. I'll also be speaking at the America's Credit Union Small Credit Union Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Joshua Barclay: Okay, awesome. I want to thank our guest today. I want to thank Becky Reed for being the best co-host in the world. And I want to give a special thanks to you, our listeners, for continuing to support and listen to another episode of "Grow Your Credit Union." Remember, if you dig the show, please follow us on your podcast player of choice and share this episode with someone who would benefit from listening.
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