Despite challenging times, a recent CUES 2009 Staffing Manual for Credit Unions, written by Fredrickson & Associates President Dr. Carl Fredrickson, finds that opportunity knocks for credit unions to make the most of their greatest resource-their staff.
Research reveals that members perceive a credit union's staff as the most important element of service and service delivery. While rates, fees and technology are important, it's people, with the potential to listen and respond in diverse ways to solve problems, that members value most.
"The ability to marshal the right people, in the right roles and in optimal combinations is the single most important factor in competitive success in this turbulent environment," stated Fredrickson in the report, which looks at the efficient organization of people in credit unions.
Recommended For You
The CUES report indicated management training dollars are down 2% of the training budget, while staff turnover is up 5.4%. In addition, as the size of the average credit union has grown and credit unions have increased efficiency overall staff levels have declined.
According to the report, this means that regardless of size, credit unions have used technology, management skill, outsourcing and resource-sharing to serve members with proportionally fewer people over time. Given the findings, not all large credit unions have the competitive advantage since some medium-size and smaller institutions are able to be equally or even more efficient than their larger counterparts.
Branching has also affected staffing levels. Branch centric credit unions have about 16.6% more employees per $1 million in assets than their nonbranch-centric counterparts. In terms of full-time equivalents, branch-centric credit unions have 16.8% more FTEs per $1 million in assets than non-branch centric credit unions.
Branch-centric branches are defined as those meeting the following two standards: more than 50% of total FTEs work outside the main office and the ratio of members divided by staffed branches is less than 4,000 not counting the main office or shared branches unless one or more people on the shared branch staff is on the credit union's payroll.
The report also found that the news isn't all bleak. Despite a recession, job creation has been robust with the number of new jobs created ranging from 3.2 to 9.5. Some 71% of credit unions created at least one new job in 2008.
Here is a look at other findings from the report:
© Touchpoint Markets, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more inforrmation visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
