The country is getting ready to celebrate Labor Day on Monday. As you know, this is the holiday set aside to celebrate workers and their contributions to their communities.

The past couple of years have caused Labor Day to be a bittersweet holiday for many of our fellow citizens. The unemployment rate remains stubbornly high despite the fact that millions of out-of-work people want to work and are seeking work. Let's continue to keep all of those folks in our minds and hearts this Labor Day weekend.

There are reasons to celebrate though! This is especially true for the thousands of people who work at our nation's credit unions. The work that you do is important, challenging and life-changing and should be recognized. As a reminder – here are just a few things that you do:

- Provide loans to members and small businesses that may not get the money elsewhere.

- Help members restore and repair battered credit histories.

- Conduct educational seminars to help people stay in their homes, establish and maintain a budget, protect their identities, save for college, understand investments and plan for retirement.

- Help people achieve the American Dream of home ownership.

- Develop lasting and meaningful relationships with your members and the communities you serve.

- Create opportunities and hope in the face of challenges and anxiety.

- Develop new business.

- Create new and innovative products, benefits and services.

- Make improvements to procedures, policies and operations to ensure greater productivity and efficiency.

- Collaborate and network with your industry peers.

- Implement sound compliance rules despite the never-ending myriad of regulations associated with doing so.

- Establish trust which leads to the most priceless commodity of all: member loyalty.

Indeed, your work is important and should be appreciated. I have had the enormous pleasure of working with many credit unions throughout the country (as both an employee and a consultant) and I am always so impressed with the enthusiasm and passion shown by credit union employees.

And in case you forgot, credit union employees aren't paid millions of dollars in salary and bonuses to do the jobs for which they were hired. But you perform your duties happily and fervently because you care and you hopefully know that you are making a difference in people's lives!

For all that you have done and will continue to do – THANK YOU! Happy Labor Day!

Sean McDonald is president of Your Full Potential LLC in Bloomfield, N.J.

Instant Insights /

Have a Great Labor Day and Thanks for All You Do

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