Integris Credit Union
Number of Employees: 167
Head Office: Prince George
Think “merger,” and most people also think “redundancies.” But when three different credit unions in northern B.C., with branches in Clinton, Fort St. James, Prince George, Quesnel and Vanderhoof, joined in 2004 to form Integris Credit Union, it was a different story.
“Everybody had a five-year guarantee of their job, as long as there weren’t performance issues,” recalls Integris CEO Brian Bentley. From day one of the merger, Integris’s 170 employees were consulted on everything from their new job titles, salaries, benefits plans and even the organization’s mission statement, he says. “The vision, mission and guiding principles were developed by a group of employees and submitted to the board, which is very unusual. Normally, the board decides on that, gives you a plaque and you put it on the wall. We felt that the only way to make that a living document is to have the employees put it into words that mean something to them.”
The result was a set of six guiding principles, explains Margaret Ferguson, Integris’s training manager: “The most important one is, ‘Work made fun gets done.’ We have other ones like, ‘Improvement always counts because we know that learning involves mistakes.’ ”
Employees are encouraged to take courses, and there’s been a huge focus on training, says Bentley. The company has covered the cost of various courses and hired professional coaches to work with its supervisors, managers and higher-level staff. But the support extends beyond the office, with preferential rates on loans and mortgages and a policy that lets employees use their sick days whether they or a family member is ill. In addition, as part of a life-balance initiative, staff are rewarded with a points system for any activities they do to keep fit.
Come Christmastime, employees are rewarded for their huffing and puffing with cash up to $150. “If I’m doing the best I can and I get $75, that’s huge,” Ferguson enthuses. “I can buy a great Speedo swimming suit and keep it going.”
And when it comes to hiring new employees, says Bentley, who personally attends every orientation session, “we spend more time on attitude and personality than we do on current skills, because we can train those skills.” Little wonder that one survey respondent summed up life at Integris with these words: “It is a joy to come to work every day.”
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Funny, I worked there for a
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 2009-02-27 10:52.