Build Culture From the Bottom Up

Building an Intentional Culture

The word “intentional” is often used to describe a high-performing culture. Forbes defines an intentional culture as one that is built “from the bottom up” and is centered around core values that provide a strong foundation for the organization.

At $5.6 billion Visions Federal Credit Union, headquartered in Endwell, New York, the culture was built intentionally to align around the core values of trust, community, integrity and service.

“In discussing our culture, I like to start with two acronyms,” says Visions FCU’s Culture & Inclusion Officer LaToya Pryce, Ph.D.(c), MBA, CCM. “One is DEIB, our version of diversity, equity and inclusion, which also includes belonging. The other is IAT. We are intentional, authentic and transparent, especially when it comes to our DEIB initiatives. Those are the pillars that guide us. We don’t do things simply to check off boxes, win awards, make quotas or follow trends. We operate from a place that is anchored to our mission and our values.”

The credit union’s mission is “to make Visions matter” for its 250,000-plus members, who are served by 60 branch offices in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. “We keep our mission and values alive and top of mind because that’s what drives our culture,” says Culture & Inclusion Specialist Kendra Pickett, MSIOP, MPA, SHRM-CP. “We want all our employees to know what Visions stands for because it helps them determine, ‘Is what I’m doing aligned with our culture?’ When you have that alignment, it builds and strengthens the culture. It helps employees understand, ‘Why are we doing what we’re doing?’ They can’t be successful if they don’t know the ‘why.’”

As their titles make clear, CUES members Pryce and Pickett play integral roles in advancing the culture at Visions FCU. Pryce came to the credit union two years ago to enhance employee engagement practices and to spearhead the organization’s internal and external DEIB initiatives. A few months later, Pickett transitioned from an HR generalist role to her specialized responsibilities for culture and inclusion. 

“While we both have the word ‘culture’ in our titles, it’s not just LaToya and [me] building the culture for the nearly 1,000 employees at Visions,” says Pickett. “We’re always bringing people into the conversation to help examine and strengthen the culture. We are intentional in our communication because we want everyone to understand their role in contributing to the culture.”

The Impact of a Strong Culture

A strong organizational culture has a positive impact both internally and externally. At Visions FCU, not only has the culture led to greater employee engagement and job satisfaction, but it also has translated to more responsive service for members and better community outreach.

“If you have a strong culture, it will definitely spill out into the community,” Pryce says. “We follow the credit union mission of ‘people helping people,’ but before you can extend your efforts outward, you have to make sure you are solid internally. That is something that a strong organizational culture allows us to achieve.”

Coupling the concepts of culture and inclusion has been effective at Visions FCU. Its DEIB focus has “enabled us to create deeper connections and relationships with our team, our managers and our members,” says Pickett.

Cultivating these deeper connections can be transformative for a workplace. Organizations are less likely to have negative issues such as employee burnout, low productivity or high turnover because the culture provides an outlet for solving them. “That’s why we were so intentional about adding the B for ‘belonging’ to DEIB,” Pryce says. “We stress the importance of psychological safety and psychological empowerment. We want to empower employees to be their authentic selves.”

When a culture is strong, Jadhav says it will be embedded in all the credit union’s activities. “Ask yourself: How is your culture showing up in meetings? How is it showing up when you give feedback? How is it showing up in your recruiting process, your performance management and the way you assess your leaders?”

To maintain a strong culture, many organizations ensure that their recruiting efforts prioritize finding employees who will be a good cultural fit. While fit is important, Jadhav suggests that organizations go a step further. “I love the idea of recruiting people not just as a culture fit but as a culture add,” she says.

The employment website Indeed describes a culture add as someone who brings fresh ideas to the organization while still adhering to the company’s values. Culture adds make the organization stronger by diversifying the perspectives of its workforce. 

“We tend to hire like-minded people because it’s comfortable, but if everyone is like-minded, that doesn’t allow us to innovate or evolve,” Jadhav says. “To create true inclusion, we should think about bringing in people who are culture adds and can bring fresh contributions to our culture.”

Communicating the Culture

Communication is key to maintaining a strong culture, and that starts at the very top of the organization. “The better you are at communicating your mission at the leadership level, the stronger your culture will be in reinforcing it,” Sears says.

In her business, Jadhav coaches organizations on the importance of telling stories to communicate the culture. “Sharing stories is a powerful training tool,” she says. “It’s an effective way to make clear what your culture looks like.”

Jadhav describes three types of stories that organizations can tell. “First are the impact stories, which depict the impact your organization is having on your members, your employees and your partners—all of your stakeholders,” she says. “Next are integrity stories. When did you, as an organization, do something because it was aligned with your mission even if it was difficult to do? Maybe there was a cost to your credit union. Maybe you lost market share or access to a certain segment of consumers. But you made the tough decision because of your integrity.”

Lastly, there are hero stories. “Who are the heroes in your organization?” Jadhav asks. “I advise companies to look for heroes in the most unexpected of places. Don’t exclusively name senior leaders as your heroes because then you’re training your organization to rely only on them. Look to your frontline folks who are saving the day for your members. Those people are heroes too.”

Stories are a way to help communicate important aspects of the culture, Jadhav adds. For instance, if innovation is a core value, leaders should be prepared to tell stories about the organization’s best innovations. “If you expect people coming into your organizations to innovate, you should share your innovation stories with them the first day they’re hired,” she says.

While leaders need to do a good job in communicating the organization’s culture, Pryce stresses that it’s also important to give employees the opportunity to voice their opinion. “We want employee feedback,” she says. “We make it clear in our engagement surveys that we want to hear what they have to say. We use that input to drive a lot of our decisions all year long. I think that’s what really ties employees to our organization and helps enhance their sense of belonging.”

Jadhav observes that it’s important for credit unions to get feedback about the culture from all segments of their stakeholders, encompassing employees, members and community partners. “In a mission-driven industry, you have a lot of stakeholders who care about what you do,” she says. “They want a seat at the table, and they should have a seat at the table. If they have a voice in your mission, vision and values, they can support and steward and buy into them.”

In her work, Jadhav uses a model called appreciative inquiry, which brings together a cross-section of stakeholders with a goal of achieving positive organizational change. “You do a facilitated process that allows your stakeholders to weigh in on key issues, such as, ‘If we dreamed our biggest dream and it came true, what would that reality look like?’ You use that to source additional questions where everybody has a voice in designing the desired future for the organization.”

An Organization-Wide Responsibility

Every level of the organization should have a role in creating and maintaining the organizational culture, starting at the very top. “I always say that senior leaders are accountable for the culture—they take the pulse, they look at the impact of culture on business goals and employee engagement—but everybody is responsible for creating it,” says Jadhav.

“Leadership has to be the role model,” Sears affirms. “Each part of the culture has to be reinforced at leadership and then at management so it’s more likely to be embraced by individual contributors.”

The process of maintaining the culture needs to be constant and ongoing, Pryce says. “If there is someone who thinks, ‘We will have a strong culture if we just do these five things, and then we’re done,’ that’s absolutely not true,” she says. “Shaping the culture is work that never ends. Everyone contributes. It’s all-hands-on-deck.”

Pryce agrees that the best organizational cultures will be broadly supported by everyone in the organization. “The culture cannot be on the shoulders of any one department or individual,” she says. “It should be a shared responsibility. That’s the way you get buy-in. That’s the way you move the needle. That’s the way you create the culture you want.”  cues icon 

Diane Franklin is a longtime contributor to CU Management magazine.