Community Resource Federal Credit Union
By Joyce Moed

LATHAM, N.Y.–Community Resource Federal Credit Union is motivating its employees.
The $65-million CU created an employee incentive committee about one year ago. This committee is responsible for developing six weeklong incentive programs per year to support the CU’s objective of increasing accounts per member.

The most incentive program consists of a racetrack theme, which corresponds with the Saratoga horseracing season, since Saratoga Springs is about 30 minutes north of Community Resource FCU. The racetrack promotion ended on Sept. 4.

"Employees and managers are divided into three teams and assigned a race horse," said Wendy Meola, director of marketing for the 6,000-member credit union. "Managers are owners and back office employees are trainers. Racing teams earn ribbons for new accounts. Ribbons earn employees moves around the track, set up similar to a Monopoly board."

Employees earned extra ribbons by better on whether their team would sell certain products within a specified time period. The team with the most ribbons won the game. Winning team members receive $50 gift cards.

The idea of creating an employee-incentive began in January, when the credit union’s management created a football-themed incentive program.

"We wanted staff to be more involved and enthusiastic so we asked employees to volunteer to work on a committee to develop employee incentive programs beginning in March," Meola said.
The employee incentive committee consists of one volunteer from each department.

"The committee meets as a team," Meola explained. "They come up with a new idea. They’re very creative. Then there’s a training session about it. Then the staff gets divided into teams. It’s been phenomenal."

The committee was given three parameters.

"One–they had to involve everyone, including back office staff; Two–the program needed to emphasize attracting checking, car loans and home equities; and three–the budget for each promotion had to be $300 or less," Meola said.

Since that time, the committee has developed three programs–a Monopoly program, a springtime Monopoly program, and the racetrack-themed program.

"When the committee started, services per member was 2.2, and now it’s 2.50," Meola said. "We don’t calculate this ratio the way other credit unions do. We include only share accounts, checking accounts, CDs and loans. Our checking accounts have averaged 41 per month versus a monthly average of 26 in 2008."

The incentive promotions have encouraged employees to focus on the CU’s service-ratio goals, and emphasized cross selling products to members, Meola said. She said that members are benefiting, too, because they are learning about products that they weren’t aware of previously.
"The incentive programs have included friendly competition between employees and the chance to work with different people from other departments, and have made employees’ jobs more interesting and fun," Meola said.