Building Organizational Culture Through Career Pathing
About First Commerce Credit Union
First Commerce is a full-service financial institution offering a comprehensive range of products and services for every stage of life. Driven by a commitment to empower people to enhance their financial well-being, First Commerce offers best-in-class tools and technology to help people pursue their financial goals, along with support from a local team of financial professionals.
The Challenge: Creating More Rewarding Work Experiences
First Commerce always placed a high importance on giving employees meaningful and purposeful work as well as opportunities to work on themselves. “That creates a very highly engaged team member,” said Carson Utecht, SVP of People at First Commerce. However, there was a desire to do more.
First Commerce was faced with a big question: How can they reach a wider group of the workforce with development and engagement incentives?
The Solution: Empowering Employees with Career Pathing
HRSG technologies enabled First Commerce to see what competencies need to be developed in order for an employee to prepare for the next step in their career. With career pathing, employees have a clear understanding of what gaps and growth opportunities exist between where they are now and the role they want to develop into.
HRSG technologies enable leaders to map multi-level competencies to each role in their organization. Multi-level competencies also indicate the specific behaviors needed to demonstrate proficiency in each competency. This helps employees know exactly how to perform their job well. Multi-level competencies also give leaders the information to objectively measure employee performance, which helps them decide how ready an employee is to take on new responsibilities.
Like many HR teams, First Commerce had limited resources and time, so efficiency and ease of use was key. First Commerce used HRSG software to roll out the project in stages, expanding and refining it over time. “We wanted something that would deliver excitement in our individuals, that would get them motivated, that would be easy for them to jump on and really utilize everything that it has to offer,” said Donna Moran, Culture Champion at First Commerce.
The Result: A Culture Rooted in Growth and Development
Successfully planning and executing a career pathing program using HRSG’s multi-level competencies allowed First Commerce to build a positive work culture that aligned with its own core values.
“We have always had this ‘employee-first’ mindset. We really feel like that’s foundational in building our culture,” Moran said. “If we can… build the culture inside or organization, which is good for our team, then that kind of flows on over to our [customers]. That overflows to the growth of the organization, which benefits everybody involved.”
Key Learnings
Many of the lessons First Commerce learned can be applied to a variety of competency-based management projects, including:
- Align projects to the organization’s values.
- Action is better than perfectionism. Break a project down into tangible timelines and checkpoints.
- Continually obtain feedback and refine your project.
