Training Success

For top-notch member service, a credit union needs first to hire the best possible employees with the qualifications and skills required. But there is an equally important second step: providing training for both new and experienced staff.

Training initially brings new employees up to speed with specific skills and, equally critical, introduces them to the CU’s culture and values. Ongoing training introduces new products, adds leadership skills and reinforces the value of the employee to the credit union. The challenge, though, is often finding a way to put these various training components into a coordinated program, and updating your approach in response to changing times.

Following are the stories of two credit unions, both in Wisconsin, that have done just that.

Learning as Core Value

Training is a priority at $2 billion/136,000-member Summit Credit Union, Madison, Wis. “Learning is one of our core values,” says CUES member Kimberly Frederickson, VP/financial education and business development. “We have a list of essential behaviors for team members that includes ‘I am engaged in continuous learning’ and we expect managers to create an environment that supports learning. I think these explicit statements help tremendously.”

“I oversee all things educational,” Frederickson says. That means she’s in charge of the credit union’s internal training team, member education and related business development. To make all that happen, she supervises a team of five (one part-time) and they enable the credit union to provide in-depth training where it is needed.

She’s able to reinforce that high-level support by involving senior management in the training (and making it more fun): The chief financial officer, for example, does a webinar for lending staff they call “CSI Lending.” It’s a case-based study of loans­—with a theme based on the popular CSI TV show—that entertains while it teaches.

While Frederickson sees the value of including senior management in some training areas, she cautions that most training should be done by people with expertise in adult learning. “I have seen some other credit unions where they have taken people who are good at their jobs and put them in charge of training others to do that job. That rarely works well—being good at something just doesn’t translate into being able to teach others to do what you do.”

Instead, she has focused on bringing in staff with a training background and keeping them engaged with the training and teaching industry. “We are always following new research and taking time to keep up with best practices in adult learning,” she says. Frederickson and other members of her team belong to the Association of Talent Development and frequently attend seminars for their own professional development; Frederickson herself is a Certified Professional in Learning and Performance.

She and her colleagues take a consulting approach to their work. Her team will consult with management about the needs of their staff, will consult on special projects and campaigns to find ways they can assist, and will coach specific employees as needed.

In all her training plans, Frederickson emphasizes the importance of consistency. “Having a training structure or model where training is handled by each individual branch is often problematic,” she says. “It’s easy for what’s being taught to drift away from your intended curriculum.”

This is especially critical during onboarding training where new staff are just being introduced to the credit union processes and goals. Frederickson comments that the quality of the onboarding experience affects the new employee’s engagement, productivity and retention—all factors that can significantly affect the bottom line.

What is working well in training at Summit CU? One strong area is the integration of relationship skills with CU procedures. Frederickson says she believes it’s essential to teach staff the interpersonal skills that enable them to have positive interactions with their colleagues and with members.

“This is part of every course we teach. For example, if we are training member service reps, we will teach them how to negotiate a check and place a hold on a check. But we don’t stop there. We also teach them how to explain to the member what is being done and why, and how to handle the situation if the member becomes upset or angry. They get a chance to practice these situations during the training as well, so they will be comfortable handling any problem.”

She finds that when people learn this as part of one piece of training they retain the information better and are more likely to apply it when faced with a challenging situation. “It also reinforces that the ‘people skills’ are as important as knowing how to complete a particular form.”

Another way Frederickson enhances training retention is to keep sessions short and intersperse them with regular working days when employees can practice what they are learning. She’s found that two weeks straight of classroom learning is much less effective than two days of training, followed by three days of work and then another two days of training and so on.

E-Learning

The biggest change in recent years has been the increase in webinars and computer-based learning. Explains Frederickson: “We now have a mix of instructor-based courses and webinars, with about 25 percent of our training now in a webinar format. We do all our webinars in house, and share them across the branches to ensure consistency. Most last 30 minutes or less so it is easy for managers and employees to schedule the time to complete them, and each location has a designated training computer that the employees can use.”

Summit CU uses Articulate Storyline and Articulate Replay for its Web-based courses. For webinars, the CU uses Adobe Connect although the CU was planning a move to Webex Enterprise Edition later this summer. In addition, the CU uses Audacity for audio recording with basic hardware: a Snowball USB Microphone and Logitech HD 1080 Webcam. Microsoft PowerPoint is another frequent tool.

While there was an initial investment in the equipment to produce webinars, Frederickson says this has easily been covered by the reduction in travel costs and the increase in productivity. In the past, employees might drive an hour for a one-hour training on a new product, then drive an hour back. Now that same employee can step away from his usual duties for just 30 minutes to watch a webinar that gives him the information he needs.

“You have to expect change,” Frederickson says. “We’re always looking for new ideas that can improve effectiveness and efficiency.”

Internal Consultants

Also based in Madison, Wis., $1.9 billion/191,000-member UW Credit Union serves the 26 campuses and surrounding areas of the University of Wisconsin. Pam Peterson is director/human resources and organizational development, overseeing a team of talent management consultants. She explains that the TM consultant is “a human resources generalist providing professional support to client supervisors and managers.”

Peterson says that in the past, the roles involved with training and development were quite specific. “We would have one person who did only recruitment, and another person who did only training for new hires,” she says. This often led to burnout, especially in the recruitment area which can be quite stressful. Instead, Peterson opted to help her staff become more well-rounded as human resources professionals through the TM consultant roles.

“We provide a lot of training for the TM consultants,” she adds. “They get training in adult and workplace learning, coaching skills and presentation skills. There is also considerable training in business consulting. We want our consultants to find ways to add value to our business, and to do that they have to thoroughly understand it.”

While her consultants build their expertise in training, Peterson says they rely heavily on subject matter experts within the organization to help them design curricula and training materials. “It’s very much a partnership,” she says. The subject matter experts often deliver the training because their expertise with the product or system means they can better answer unanticipated questions or put the information in context.

The consulting and coaching approach Peterson uses in designing training filters down to all levels of the organization. She says managers receive coaching training and are expected to have monthly dialogues with each of their staff. “Development is always part of that discussion,” she says. “The employee is encouraged to discuss his or her future career goals and the manager talks about what training might be needed to achieve those goals, or to improve the employee’s work. It’s always a focus.”

This strong focus isn’t surprising, because UW CU has made a commitment to training part of its strategic plan and core values. “We have wonderful support from our executive team,” says Peterson. She feels that support stays strong because her team has proved its value and success over the years.

An Example

In 2011, an organizational goal was set to achieve loan portfolio growth goals to improve the interest margin and keep service fees low. Peterson and the TM consultants were part of the cross-functional team working toward this goal, with responsibility for developing a lender competency model, creating development plans and training materials, and supporting managers in helping their staff acquire the needed skills. The results were an increase of 5.5 percent in loans (higher than the planned target), a 92 percent booked-to-loan efficiency rate and a savings to members of more than $930,000 in the first year. As well, employee engagement increased.

Peterson believes measuring training program outcomes helps not only to identify value but to enable tweaking and adjustment of plans to improve those results. She was able to show, for example, that an improved employee onboarding program increased the number of memberships and of new checking accounts. Her team continues to make adjustments and improvements to those classes and to track the outcomes.

In the past few years, Peterson has made a larger “tweak” by shifting to more webinars and e-learning programs. “Four or five years ago, all our training was done in classrooms,” she says. “Now we are more often doing these online programs, to save on travel costs. It’s increasingly expensive to bring people into a classroom.”

The credit union is also making more use of the team teaching concept for all types of courses, having a TM consultant working alongside a subject matter expert or a manager to introduce a new product or cover new skills.

Peterson says the secret to successful training is not just the training itself, but the supports in place around it. “One is the support and guidance we have from senior management,” she says. “They work with us to identify needs­—there is no point in doing training when it’s not adding value to the business.”

Another component she sees as crucial is the input from the subject matter experts who collaborate with her trainers on the curricula design.

Reinforcement After Training

But perhaps the most significant component is the ongoing reinforcement of new skills and processes after the training is done. “We feel there is no point in training if it is not reinforced,” says Peterson. Each manager is expected to meet with each employee once a month and use a template form to review the employee’s work, strengths, weaknesses and goals.

That form is constantly revised, so if an employee has completed a training program to learn a new skill or be updated on a product, questions are added to the form that directly relate to what was learned in training.

“We train the managers on how to use these forms and what the expectations are,” she adds. “So if the employee has been taught a new skill, the manager will ask about how it’s going, what’s working well, if there are any problems. It’s not just forgotten about once the training is over.”

The manager is also coached to observe the employee at work and comment positively when he or she sees those new skills or processes being used.

These two credit unions have taken different approaches to training, but they both share the same foundation: a strong commitment­—from upper management on down—to continuous learning and improvement. In a rapidly changing world, that’s become a necessity.

Teresa Pitman is a freelance writer based in Guelph, Ontario.