There's no silver bullet for effective workplacecommunication but making sure your organization's culture isaligned to support and foster those efforts may be a good startingpoint.

“It is so important to live your culture. It cannot be justwords,” said Denise O'Hara, senior vice president human resourcesand organizational development at the $1.8 billion Summit Credit Union in Madison, Wis.

“If management does not consciously build a support system forthe credit union's culture and also model it and coach to it, thedesired culture will not exist,” O'Hara added. “Our culture is whatmakes it special to work at Summit.”

For the second consecutive year, Summit was awarded the AmericanSociety for Training & Development's BEST Award. This year, thecredit union was recognized in a number of areas: leveraging itslearning function to drive its organizational culture and brand,its integrated approach to talent management and strategicalignment of the learning function to support organizationalinitiatives.

“Our culture is our nature, the manifestation of our shared­values, attitudes, standards and beliefs,” said O'Hara. ­“Summit'sculture is collaborative, innovative, and fun. Every Summit­employee builds our culture ­every day. We take our culture­seriously because our culture is what ­enables us to differentiateourselves in the market.”

She added that there has been a conscious effort to build theinfrastructure to support that culture from honing Summit's vision,mission and brand promise so that the entire team has a shared goalto collaboratively developing a list of core values and essentialbehaviors as employee, manager and senior leader. The essentialbehaviors boiled down to relationship building and teamwork, beingmember centered, operating with trust and integrity and havingentrepreneurial drive for results and organizational agility.

With these essential behaviors as a significant part of theannual performance process and the development of an online peerrecognition program where employees can acknowledge each other forbehaviors that represent Summit values, O'Hara said it has helpedensure consistency.

“We find that many of our employees do not want to be on a fiveto seven- year track for promotion,” said O'Hara. “They are lookingto grow and progress in the organization more quickly, which makesit especially ­important that the managers we hire enjoy and wantto develop others.”

To that end, employees are hired for attitude and culture fitmore than skills. In addition to new job postings being postedinternally first, a three part program entitled CEO of Your Careerhas been successful in engaging employees in charting their ownsuccess.

Here is how it works. Employees are invited to hear frommanagers and vice presidents to learn information about specificpositions of interest. They then break out for individual questionand answer sessions, a personal ­self-assessment of strengths, andan opportunity for the employee to be a CEO and select a board madeup of representatives from human resources and training as well astheir own manager. Their board meets to assist them with developingplans for the career they are interested in achieving at Summit. “Our collaborative culture naturally helps buildcandidates for internal openings and our employees appreciate thoseopportunities to build their career paths,” said O'Hara.“Recruiting for attitude brings with it a diversity of ideas,perspectives and approaches.  Innovation is part of ourculture, and we build an environment of respect where we look forothers' opinions or ideas on how to improve. Our culture weeds outthe 'yes' people early in the hiring process.”

Suzanne Oliver, senior vice president of educational servicesand governmental affairs at West Jordan, Utah-based MountainAmerica Credit Union, couldn't agree more about the value ofdeveloping talent from within.

For the third time, Training Magazine has ranked the $3billion credit union as one of the top 125 providers ofemployer-sponsored workforce training and development. MACU was ­recognized for its approach to training some 300 staffersfor the implementation of a new loan origination system. Inaddition to holding instructor-led classes for branch champions, aseparate class for remaining loan officers ­focused on the basicsof the system was made available via ­Webinar, ­regional training­centers and corporate headquarters. Branch champions thensupplemented the classes with on-the-job training. The effortresulted in a time savings of 20 to 35 minutes when members opennew accounts.

“Simply put, better trained employees make for happier members,”said Oliver, who is also chair of CUNA's human resources andtraining development council. “We're very committed to staffdevelopment. Communication is the number one challenge for anyorganization and we are always working on ways to improve.”

One move that has made all the difference has been centralizingall corporate communication, internal and external alike, withinthe marketing department. As part of that alignment, a resourcecenter was developed where employees can find everything from thelatest campaigns and product and service offerings to new processesand training classes.

“There's been a boost in confidence of employees,” said Oliver.“They no longer feel inundated by information, especially the frontlines. Very little falls through the cracks now and no one iscaught off guard by a new promotion for example.”

It's been good for the organization as a whole and has beenworking well, Oliver noted. About three key messages a week arefeatured and the information is divided in the categories of the,operations, employee experience and charity focus. It's changedjust enough to keep interest up and drive employees to look atit.

She added it has also helped streamline and identify the bestway to prioritize and send information out.

“We used to send emails for everything but with so many changes,the updates would be easy to overlook,” said Oliver. “Now, we onlysend emails as a news flash when needed, and managers helpdetermine if an e-blast is needed.”

Taking a continuous, more layered approach to communications,morning meetings are also held at each branch about 10 minutesbefore opening.

“We all can get so busy at the branch sometimes you may not knowwhat's going on or who is on vacation so they take that time tocover the business of the day,” said Oliver. “We've been doing itfor three years now and it's been very impactful.”

Time is also spent during the meeting to focus on a servicecommitment value of the day and shine a spotlight on an employeeliving the MACU mission.

“Everyone at the branch has an opportunity to lead the meetingand it's been a great way for team members to feel more connectedevery day,” said Oliver. “It opens a dialogue and another benefitis it's helped our culture because it serves as a reminder that ourmission, vision and core values are not just words on wall or pieceof paper.”

Oliver said the credit union has to live and deliver on it byapplying it every day with every member interaction. It alsoencourages everyone to be more observant in recognizing eachperson's contributions, she added.