Credit union creates a culture of connection with 94% of employees receiving recognition in first year, alongside multi-layered blog strategy

What they needed:

With 13 branches across locations in the U.S., company information wasn’t reaching all employees at the right time. MFCU’s hybrid workforce consists of 35% frontline employees and 65% remote employees, which meant there were silos within the organisation and messaging was inconsistent. This made it difficult to know what was resonating with people or what departments were receiving the right information at the right time.

Not having a central location also meant that great work happening around the organisation wasn’t visible to the Leadership Team. The Operations Team, including Professional Development Manager Heather Shafer and COO Ryan Lycans, knew that they needed to create a culture of appreciation (and be able to measure it) to increase visibility across the entire organisation. Heather received buy-in from Ryan to look for a new tool to boost employee engagement and he championed the initiative.  

Around this same time, the organisation was also going through a brand refresh, but it was facing a bit of an 'identity crisis' when it came to identifying who MFCU is and who it serves. This led the team to start working with Reward Gateway to create a centralised, branded platform that was available to all employees called 'The Wire!'. 

How we helped:

The Wire! is an employer-branded employee engagement platform that houses employee reward and recognition, employee communications, employee discounts, employee surveys and employee benefits information. It has become a one-stop-shop for dispersed, frontline employees to stay connected on any device, at any time. 

In order for Heather and the team to address the challenges of increasing visibility of the hard work happening at each location – and create a family-feel environment at work – they implemented a tiered-recognition approach:

With the engagement analytics dashboards, Heather and the team are able to see which departments or teams are sending recognition to other parts of the business. This gives Heather direction on which areas to focus on in the future and informs her about how the tools are helping to break down silos and increase collaboration.

Heather adds, “With The Wire!, we’re now able to celebrate one another across the organisation which wasn’t possible before Reward Gateway. The platform helps embed our company values into our everyday culture and the recognition amplifies this. Our employees and leaders are much more aligned with our culture than ever before.”

Before working with Reward Gateway, the team shared blog posts but there was too much information in them and it was overwhelming, so people weren’t able to keep up with it. The team then worked with their dedicated Client Success Manager to create a strategic communications plan to keep all employees in the loop, ensure they’re receiving important company updates and boost cross-departmental connections. The blogs include:

• Great News!!!: This is the main blog that includes different themed posts with various goals. There is only one post per day so employees can focus on one topic and give it their full attention.
  • Motivational Monday: Messages from the Executive Leadership, including the CEO.
  • Wow Wednesday: Updates on credit union events or people happenings, which come from the Communications Team.
  • Fun Friday: Employee spotlights and updates, which blends employee communication and recognition in one blog.

In addition to the themed blogs, Tuesdays and Thursdays are reserved for other key updates from different teams to boost awareness, like Information Security Day.

• The MINE!: This blog comes from the COO Ryan Lycans. Part of being a champion of The Wire! meant publishing his own weekly blog to build a community and increase leadership participation. His blog includes a post called 'Fun Chart Friday,' where he pulls reports and posts charts that are relevant to company goals, the credit union or interesting things he finds. He asks questions to give employees a chance to guess and engage with him directly, which helps to build relationships across teams.

All of the blog posts allow for two-way communication, where employees can ask questions, comment or add reactions which gives Heather insight into what types of internal communications are working or what needs updating.

For more insight, the team also uses employee surveys such as an eNPS to gauge how employees are feeling about working at MFCU. Employees can also give feedback at any time on the 'Give Us Feedback' tile that lives on the homepage, encouraging a more open and transparent culture.

To round out its offerings, The Wire! also houses employee discounts that help employees save big on special purchases, which has been especially helpful during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

What they achieved:

Since launching The Wire! in June of 2020, there’s been a cultural transformation at MFCU. Gaining leadership buy-in at the start of Heather’s employee engagement journey was key to engaging managers and leaders on the platform. In fact, manager-led recognition has increased, with 57% of all recognition coming from managers and 43% from non-managers. 

Recognition has been central to the culture at MFCU and 94% of all employees have received recognition to date. On top of that, nearly half of all employees have sent recognition. Since June 2020, 2167 eCards and awards have been sent, demonstrating a shift in building a culture of appreciation. The technology is helping improve cross-departmental recognition and visibility, shown by the 3,375 reactions to and 1k comments on recognition moments.

In addition to the R&R enhancements, the streamlined and strategic communications plan has resulted in a boost of two-way communications, available at any time for hybrid employees to read on the go. So far the team has published 188 blogs, receiving 46k total page views and 1.91k reactions from readers. 

When the team initially hosted an eNPS survey in August of 2020, the score was 60. With the introduction of new employee-focussed tools that promote connectivity, the score has increased to 65 and this number continues to climb.  

Heather says, “The Wire! has changed the culture of the credit union. We no longer have information silos or bottlenecks that prevent us from reaching our people in different locations. And we’re seeing employees collaborating more and recognising others in different departments, which was something that didn’t happen before. The Wire! is our one-stop-shop to keeping our employees engaged and creating a sense of community.”