Top People Strategy Challenges for Credit Unions

For the entirety of my tenure working with credit unions in North America, executives and board members have expressed concern about attracting and retaining talent. Concerns about competitive compensation, opportunities for professional growth and succession planning have long held sway on the minds of the leaders of the credit union system. Rightfully so. The ability to hire and retain the right people is key to the long-term sustainability of the cooperative financial system.

During the pandemic and recovery, the focus on talent intensified as we began hearing about “The Great Resignation” or “The Big Quit,” the trend of employees resigning from their jobs to find positions with greater flexibility, remote work opportunities and higher compensation, or to stay home with their families. COVID-19 allowed employees to rethink their work situations and encouraged them to prioritize what is most important to them in a job. According to a Deloitte study (tinyurl.com/mppawp44) published in September 2021, 73% of Fortune 1000 CEOs anticipated that a worker shortage would disrupt their business over the next 12 months and 57% named attracting talent among their biggest challenges. 

As CUES began its third-annual HR and talent development survey of CEOs and HR executives in North American credit unions, we were interested in seeing whether the sentiment expressed by executives in other industries would be reflected in credit unions, a system that sometimes leverages Studs Terkel’s hypothesis (tinyurl.com/mwjv5x8y) that meaningful work is an equal counterpart to financial compensation in motivating and retaining employees. What impact would COVID-19, remote work and a desire for increased flexibility in the workplace have on the credit union system, and how might CEOs and HR executives respond?

CUES retained Acuitim Marketing Research and Consulting to facilitate the survey. The questionnaire was designed to determine the most pressing talent development needs. Our objectives for the survey were to better understand the most challenging aspects of talent development at credit unions and how the executive teams plan to address them. We also hoped to evaluate how effectively credit unions tie their strategic planning to addressing talent development needs and gauge whether the current workforce is aligned with credit unions’ current and future needs.