Observation Leads To Opportunity At CommunityAmerica

Recruitment and retention have been top of mind for credit union executives in recent years as a hot job market has made those tasks more challenging than usual.

At CommunityAmerica Credit Union ($5.4B, Lenexa, KS), a job-shadowing program has boosted retention and improved employee engagement, particularly among those who are still early in their careers and who make up the majority of the cooperative’s staff.

“We do an annual engagement survey, and one of the things that has shown up in recent years is career advancement,” explains Julie Schaller, senior vice president of human resources at CommunityAmerica. “We tend to lose front-line employees when they don’t see a path forward in their career”

On-The-Job Learning

CommunityAmerica launched its job shadow program seven years ago and has continually refined it since. During that time, the credit union has added flexibility to the shadowing period, allowing half-day observation for some roles and full days for others. That has helped keep shadowers engaged while ensuring shadowees aren’t pulled away from their daily work for too long.

The program is open to any employee who has been in their role for at least six months, although Schaller says it’s entry-level staffers who most commonly take advantage of it. The opportunity has been especially popular with branch and call center staffers who are interested in moving into support roles.

Supervisor approval is required, and applicants work with the head of the department they plan to shadow to better understand the role they want to shadow as well as the work of that department.

“They can request to shadow a variety of areas, and then we work with the department to come up with an agenda to give them a picture of what’s happening,” Schaller says. “For instance, with HR, we have them spend time with the talent-acquisition team, we have them spend time with our benefits and compensation team, and we have them spend time with training and development so they get a full picture of what’s happening in the department and what they might be interested in in the future.”

Doubling Participation

When CommunityAmerica started its shadowing program, internal promotions accounted for approximately 15% of all career moves. In the past five years, Schaller says that figure has jumped to 35% thanks to opportunities provided through job shadowing, LinkedIn Learning, and more.

Career advancement and development is one of the top things that keeps [younger generations] engaged at work. We have put a lot of emphasis on this as a key aspect of what we offer our people to help them develop in roles and get on a career path they love. Hopefully, that translates into retention, as well.

CommunityAmerica employs a little more than 1,000 full-time equivalent employees. The average staffer is 30 years old, meaning a substantial number of associates are fairly early in their careers.

“We hope the satisfaction and presumably the compensation increase that comes along with this will be enough to keep them anchored here for the time being and we’re not going to lose them to another organization now that we’ve given them a pretty significant leg up in their career,” Schaller says.

Particularly because the credit union employs so many staffers who are early in their careers workers — who often have different expectations about jobs and work-life balance than more tenured employees — the job shadowing program has been a substantial component of keeping staff aboard for the long haul.

“Career advancement and development is one of the top things that keeps [younger generations] engaged at work,” Schaller says. “We have put a lot of emphasis on this as a key aspect of what we offer our people to help them develop in roles and get on a career path they love. Hopefully, that translates into retention, as well.”

Lessons Learned

After seven years, leadership has gained plenty of takeaways. For starters, Schaller says, the program has helped management better understand what employees don’t know and expose them to new opportunities.

“People have been exposed to different areas of the credit union they might not have otherwise known,” she says. “The networking alone is great. We’ve had several people match up with a mentor they shadowed.”

Exposing staff to different departments has also helped employees gain a greater appreciation for what happens on different teams.

“They know conceptually we have a lending team, but they might not know what that is and what happens there every day,” Schaller says.

In bridging that gap, job shadowing has created synergies as well as presented avenues for advancement.

“The measure of success for us is internal movement,” Schaller says. “We’re putting in new tools to chart a path for careers and follow people along their promotional journeys. We aren’t there yet, but that’s what’s coming next.”

Are You Ready To Start Shadowing? Take a look at CommunityAmerica’s job shadow policies, then browse hundreds of other ready-to-use documents in HR, finance, marketing, and more in the Callahan Policy Exchange. Available now to Callahan clients.