By Ray Birch
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla.—Can an organization maintain its culture in the new Zoom environment?
PSCU says while it requires some new approaches, the company culture can be maintained—if not improved—which is what has occurred at PSCU over the last year, explains Lynn Heckler, executive vice president and chief talent officer at PSCU.
PSCU believes it can. In fact, its employee engagement score has climbed during the health crisis with its staff working from home.
“Our score for overall employee engagement increased meaningfully, by a full point,” said Heckler. “That measurement was taken in September/October of 2020, and we will do that again in September/October of this year. I am confident the new score will be even better.”
Heckler said maintaining a culture, no matter the environment, always requires orchestrating many touch points that enable human connections.
“In many ways it was absolutely easier when we were not physically separated,” said Heckler. “But the reality is the human connection that drives culture can still occur when we're not in the same room.”
Heckler said it’s critical leaders understand their roles during the pandemic in order to ensure the connections happen.
“Leaders, in my mind, during the pandemic have to think about how do we enable these connections when we're in this distributed work environment,” she explained. “For me, it's really continuing to keep our teams focused on the why. The Zoom meeting is nothing more than the how—how we just happen to be getting it done. We're still trying to inspire our employees, linking them to a general purpose. That's how we've been able to maintain culture in the past and that's how we're continuing to do it in this new Zoom environment.”
Also Deserving Attention
In addition to focusing on connections, Heckler said there are important issues organizations must give attention so as to maintain and even build the culture as staff work remotely.
“The biggest one is continue to communicate and focus on the why,” she said. “We have to be really intentional about this in the Zoom environment—intentional about communicating and really helping people understand they are part of something valuable and bigger than themselves. This becomes so much more important during turbulent times, which is what we have faced in the past year with the pandemic and the social unrest. There has never been a more important time to keep your team connected to the why.”
The Good News
The good news, said Heckler, is with credit unions the why is clear.
“It’s the people helping people philosophy of credit unions–that is the why,” Heckler said. “Credit unions live and breathe that.”
Communicating the why needs to be accomplished through multiple channels and it has to be two-way, stressed Heckler.
“That means going beyond Zoom. Zoom is simply one vehicle. At PSCU we’ve 've done podcasts, live webinars, pulse surveys…We’ve even mailed surprise gifts to staff, anything to keep that connection, anything that can keep that two-way communication going,” Heckler said. “And you have to surprise and delight your teams. We’ve gotten very creative using social media. We’ve done virtual 5K bike rides, talent shows, fundraisers, happy hours, and brown bag lunches where we send people a gift card for Uber Eats. We have created music playlists the executive team publishes—we call them the pandemic playlists. We think of many ways to keep employees connected.”
Extra Effort
Heckler emphasized the importance of keeping the culture strong and making extra efforts during the health crisis.
“Our employees are our greatest asset and they are why this company works,” she said. “You have to continue to put people first, and it's not just in the communications. It's in your business decisions. So, we made the decision that we will launch an employee experience initiative as part of our business strategy. We had been thinking about doing that before the pandemic hit, and we asked if we should hold off until this health crisis is over and everyone is not working remotely. But we decided we would not wait and launched the initiative.
“That, in a nutshell, is where we are at here at PSCU,” continued Heckler. “We have taken a very unapologetic, direct focus on family and the holistic well-being of our staff. That includes mental health, and that means going beyond your typical employee assistance program resources. We’re holding counselor/facilitator wellness sessions online. We’ve had nine of them during the pandemic and they have been well attended. We are doing regular non-work-related check-ins, as well. We've provided assistance with child, held weight-loss classes…It just takes a little out-of-the box thinking when you are working in a remote environment.”