Credit Human Scores Staff Satisfaction

Credit Human Federal Credit Union ($4.3B, San Antonio, TX) is taking steps to improve employee experience and retention by measuring sentiment via anonymous surveys, internal Net Promoter Scores (also known as NPS scores), and more.

The process began approximately two years ago, according to Tyler Reddout, the cooperative’s head of enterprise learning and development, when Credit Human adopted NPS scores to measure internal service delivery.

“As the service-giving part of the organization, we were curious as to how we do in delivering the domains we’re responsible for,” Reddout says.

That includes not only talent acquisition but also total compensation, enterprise learning and development, and employee relations.

To better understand what’s working with employee engagement and what changes might be needed, the credit union sends anonymous surveys to its nearly 900 employees. An NPS score in the 40s represents world-class HR, Reddout says. In its first round of surveys, when Credit Union was gathering a baseline, its scores hovered in the mid-20s. A subsequent round of surveys drew the same score, but participation had doubled, giving leadership more feedback to work with.

The questionnaires — delivered via Survey Monkey — are entirely optional, but Credit Human deploys a full communications strategy to generate maximum participation. Survey periods kick off on Mondays and are generally open for two weeks with a reminder email at the end of the first week and a last-chance email at the end of the second, which often generates 150-200 responses.

The goal is to reach a 95% confidence level, with a sample size ranging from 270 to 300 responses. Both years have reached that benchmark, with 333 responses in 2024.

“We’re a values-based organization, and we lean into our values,” Reddout says. “If we can’t share feedback with one another at some level, then are we living our values? It’s important to share perspectives. That helps us grow.”

That said, the communications plan and the surveys themselves are put forth in the spirit of progress, not perfection, which removes the pressure of getting everything right the first time.

A Test-And-Learn Approach

There was no precipitating event that led to installing internal NPS scores, Reddout says. It’s often easy to find out what bothers employees; what’s working or what needs improvement, however, can be harder to pin down.

“It’s challenging for an HR function to get a pulse on what we do well and what we could do better,” Reddout says. “If you think about employee experience, people usually interact with us at the [start of their employment] and they’re in the honeymoon phase. Then we don’t hear anything until a life event happens that spikes a situation.”

To better understand employee needs at different levels, Credit Human breaks out surveys by department. All employees receive one survey, but managers receive a second set to help partition feedback.

Reddout designed the surveys and scoring program, leaning on his background in organization development and psychology along with feedback from Amy Hartman, Credit Human’s chief human resources officer, and others on the team.

“It was really a test-and-learn approach,” Reddout says, noting that much of the input received from the surveys has gone into Credit Human’s two-year strategic road map.

“We took it on step further to think about the phrase, ‘Who’s your customer’s customer?’” Reddout adds. “HR’s customer is always the employee and understanding how they serve the member is important. How do we alleviate internal things that keep them from spending time helping our members? This blossomed from getting into a room to develop a road map of what we think we want to see to going out and asking people. The worst that can happen is we find out how not to do something and approach it a different way.”

FAIL And Move On

One of the biggest benefits from the surveys derives from the ability to segment response data into various employee personas. Although some credit unions have segmented their membership into different personas, fewer credit unions have taken that approach with staff.

Subsequently, Credit Human trained its HR team around different persona behaviors to better understand when to empathize, when to refer employees back to a particular plan of action, and more.

When asked what advice he has for other credit unions, Reddout emphasizes the “progress over perfection” approach. Also, using SurveyMonkey puts survey results within easy reach. Finally, it’s important to remember that “FAIL” can be an acronym — First Attempt In Learning.

“If you don’t start, that’s just one more year you don’t have any data,” Reddout says. “If we can have our FAIL, we’ll find out what we find out. This is low stakes. It’s employees only — so if we have a fail moment, we learn and we move on.”