Appreciate, Advocate, and Align: Lessons from The Great Resignation

What do credit union marketers have to do with employee retention and engagement? A lot, according to Teshia Davis, VP of People at SECU.

Teshia joins our Remarkable Credit Union podcast to talk about how SECU has navigated the Great Resignation by creating surprise and delight for their employees, centralizing DEI as part of their guiding credit union strategy, and closely aligning HR with the marketing team.

This month’s BIG question:

As American workers are leaving their jobs in droves, how can credit unions retain employees and keep up team morale?

Key takeaways

• SECU has kept turnover flat over the last three years by focusing on creating a sense of belonging in the new normal. Innovative programs they have implemented include sending regular “surprise and delight” boxes to employees, hosting monthly company-wide strategic briefing sessions with the CEO and leadership team, creating affinity groups, and bringing in dynamic outside speakers.
• DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) has been a cornerstone of SECU’s recruitment and retention efforts. They have created an internal microsite, facilitated team roundtables, and worked hard to create public statements built on purpose by working closely with the marketing team.
• SECU aligns marketing and culture on an ongoing basis through weekly meetings with the HR and marketing teams.

Read the full transcript:

Cameron Madill:
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Remarkable Credit Union podcast. We created our podcast to help credit union leaders think outside of the box about marketing, technology and community impact. Each episode we bring on expert guests from inside and outside of the industry for conversations about innovation. Our goal is to challenge your preconceptions about business as usual, and provide you with actionable takeaways that you can use to grow your membership, improve the financial health of your cooperative and magnify the positive impact in your community.

Cameron Madill:
I’m so excited about today’s topic, because I think it’s something that’s on everyone’s mind. Today’s big question, as American workers are leaving their jobs and droves, how can we retain employees and keep up team morale? Today I’m so excited to welcome Teshia Davis. Teshia has worked at SECU, Maryland’s largest credit union,“ for over 14 years, currently serving as vice president of people and has 25 years of experience in human resources. She was recently recognized as an honoree in the trailblazer and diversity equity and inclusion leader categories of Reagan’s 2021 Top Women in Wellness and HR awards. Teshia has a masters in business and currently serves as the board chair of the United Way of central Maryland. Teshia, thank you so much for joining us today.

Teshia Davis:
Oh, you’re welcome. My pleasure to be here.

Cameron Madill:
I’m excited just to jump in. I know you’ve had a long day of Zoom video calls. We were just commiserating about that.

Teshia Davis:
Yeah.

Cameron Madill:
So that’s actually, that’s a perfect segue. I would love to start with just, it’s been a hard couple years for both employers and employees and 2022 has not had the most auspicious start. From an HR standpoint, what do you think is the most daunting challenge that you have faced since March of 2020?

Teshia Davis:
Good question, Cameron. I think that is the question that a lot of HR leaders and various executives mind for us. Here at SECU, we have a unique culture in the sense where we have a hybrid dispersed workforce, which as you can imagine, definitely comes the challenge of maintaining culture. So as we shifted to our hybrid work model with 50% of our workforce being on site and the other being remote, we had to move really swiftly and adapt to how we engaged and communicated with our employees. And for us, we knew it was really critical to focus on that sense of belonging, to ensure that our culture remained strong, whether our team was working at home, or in a financial center, or onsite at our corporate office. Definitely a lot went into it to really keep our culture intact.

Cameron Madill:
I’m curious, was that a change that you made because of COVID back in March, 2020 or were you in that structure before then?

Teshia Davis:
Great question. We actually made it in response to the pandemic. We really had no choice. March of 2020, one day it was just everyone pack up your belongings, you’re going home and we’ll let you know what that looks like moving forward. So really that’s when we started really engaging with our culture differently, being that we had people on site and at home working remotely in an environment that they weren’t necessarily accustomed to.

Cameron Madill:
Just one more question on that.

Teshia Davis:
Sure.

Cameron Madill:
Have you guys decided to make that permanent, and if so, when did you make that decision? Because I think it’s a question, a lot of organizations are juggling.

Teshia Davis:
Absolutely. We did make a permanent decision to have a hybrid workforce and that decision came approximately almost a year and a half later, so last summer is really when we committed to that. I think many people looking back to March 2020, no one would’ve ever imagined that we would be where we are today. And after a couple of months pushing it out, pushing it out, pushing it out, just to further engage our culture, we had to tell them something. They just couldn’t be sitting at home wondering.

Teshia Davis:
And what we consistently heard, specifically from those that were working at home, was that they liked it. They really enjoyed the flexibility, some were managing virtual learning, some, it was just, “Hey, I’m not spending an hour and a half on the Baltimore beltways to get to work.” Because of that, we really committed to it and really putting some definition around what hybrid looks like.

Cameron Madill:
Thanks. That’s great to hear. I think one of the hardest things about the pandemic has been this sense of uncertainty, of a lack of being settled, of a lack of stability. And we made the decision for the same reason of, let’s just make a decision and move towards that rather than being in this permanent, let’s see if there’s new variants or new challenges or unexpected things.

Teshia Davis:
Exactly.

Cameron Madill:
Yeah. Well, it’s kind of a depressing term, but I do think the great resignation is very real from all the data I’ve seen and impacts we’ve seen on other companies. And I’m curious, are you feeling the impacts of the great resignation at SECU and how are you addressing that?

Teshia Davis:
I would say we are feeling it, but not mostly in the sense that I think everyone in the various industries are. Interesting, our turnover has remained flat over the past three years. And we really are proud of that because we attribute that to putting the human at the center of work. We take a very strong stance in making sure that we are emotionally connecting with our employees, that our leaders are leading with empathy, while they’re focusing on appreciation, the gift of gratitude, through peer nominated recognition, communication, as I touched on earlier, making sure people feel included. And then also just offering that flexibility.

Teshia Davis:
A lot of leaders, I know for myself on my team, it’s having candid conversations. Encouraging leaders to have those candid conversations with employees so we really understand what is meaningful to those employees, and engaging with them on our various platforms. So we have a peer recognition software, we have a performance module, and then all these things really strengthen our onboarding with new hires, mentoring relationships, and also enable employees to really see those career growth opportunities across all these multiple platforms.

Cameron Madill:
Congratulations.

Teshia Davis:
So we like to say a the great onboarding.

Cameron Madill:
The great onboarding.

Teshia Davis:
[Crosstalk 00:06:08].

Cameron Madill:
Yeah. Well, and congratulations. I think that’s a really great accomplishment. And I know, I mean, I have colleagues, I had one colleague who they lost over half their team in six months.

Teshia Davis:
Oh my God. I cannot even imagine.

Cameron Madill:
I can’t imagine.

Teshia Davis:
On top of the pandemic? That’s a lot.

Cameron Madill:
Yep. I was like, I don’t know how they’re managing. You talked about how you’ve got this 50/50 model and you’ve really leaned into it as far as remote and in person. And it sounds great. It sounds like you’ve invested in it and you’ve committed to it. And we’ve seen a lot of our clients having similar approaches, but obviously a credit union unlike, for example, a company like PixelSpoke where we can be 100% virtual, so much of credit unions are built around in person service. And so I’m curious, what are some of the challenges you’ve seen this hybrid model pose and what have you done to keep building that cohesion and connection across your team?

Teshia Davis:
Another great question. I think this is the challenge for a lot across multiple industries, basically crafting a new way of working. And it’s not familiar, so it’s like, how do you be creative? How do you think out of the box? I think one thing that we did, I’ve already spoken a lot about communications, but I really think this is at the heart of everything that we do. We created weekly company wide emails to really connect people to all aspects of our business. So not just things that people needed to know, but what different divisions we’re working on. I think that also includes anything related to the pandemic, ensuring that there was transparency, that there was alignment across multiple channels of the business. Wellbeing is very important to us. We know it’s not only work that we have to think about, but are we taking care of ourselves?

Teshia Davis:
Employees are having to do things that they never thought they would have to do. Myself, my husband’s a teacher, but I found myself teaching our seven year old, and I never aspired to be a teacher. So one thing that we did is we launched a wellness newsletter.

Teshia Davis:
We have a wellness program by the name of Be Well, and it’s really a multifaceted initiative that provides a various stream of resources related to emotional wellbeing, physical and nutrition, financial wellness. And then of course we include anything COVID related that we can kind of over arch and embed into those communications, what we call strategic briefing sessions, where we have a 30 minute touch base on a monthly basis that the call starts off with our president and CEO. Leadership team comes in, gives updates, which really helps provide that insight for employees. Again, connection to what our priorities are, what are changes that may come into play related to our strategy. Just as you mentioned, the variance come into play. That impacts our businesses, how members are engaging with us, so we want to make sure that we are sharing with the organization how we’re launching those and then how we’re also celebrating our successes.

Teshia Davis:
One thing that I think we’ve heard mostly, and not so much with just our employees, but it has extended to their families, a frequent basis, we do surprise and delight boxes where we surprise employees with a monthly branded box. And I’ll share with you Cameron, these range in value from anywhere up to, from $150 to $200. They’re curated based on the theme of that quarter, if you will. And it could be based on the season, wellbeing, just giving back to our communities. At the start of this, it was just offering masks, sanitizer, because we know couldn’t find Lysol, you couldn’t find masks. You couldn’t find sanitizer and I’ll even share that has extended onto testing kits. So when people were struggling with finding tests, we were able to secure test kits.

Teshia Davis:
We’ve held town hall sessions. We’ve done virtual award shows, talent shows. We’ve done wellness challenges. We’ve had speakers come in and talk about DEI initiatives. We’ve had our governor’s wife for Maryland come in and speak to our women in leadership group, so just different touchpoints. We talked about Zoom, but if you make it interesting enough, people will come. So our employees have really loved it, engaged with it, and we’re continuing it since it’s had such a great response.

Cameron Madill:
That’s an amazing collection of things that you guys are doing. I know we had a similar approach here at PixelSpoke of turning it up to 11. We have a internal group called our Joy Team and they went overdrive in 2020 in a good way. I think we felt similar that we had to really, really step up our game as far as building culture and connection, that it wasn’t something we really couldn’t take for granted on any level, in any way. So that’s just a wonderful set of ideas. I’m going to steal some of them. I hope you don’t mind.

Teshia Davis:
Not at all. And I think that’s why we haven’t had the great resignation. We’re tapping into, people are like, “Okay, they’re listening to me and they’re giving me something that I may not be able to find elsewhere.”

Cameron Madill:
Well, and I just wanted to highlight, I loved all those ideas, but I especially love the gift boxes. And I think this was something I remember hearing years ago in a presentation that was about culture by default or by design, obviously it’s rhetorical, you’d rather have it culture by design design then by default.

Teshia Davis:
Right.

Cameron Madill:
And it was a good presentation, but the single best takeaway I had there was if you want a really happy employee, the thing you should do on their first day is send their spouse a bottle of wine. And I remember that just stuck with me of right, but if we’ve got an employee and their partner is grumbling about their job or their company, it almost doesn’t matter what you do on in the job, because that’s their number one priority. So I love that you guys are taking care of the whole family.

Teshia Davis:
Yes. And I mean, I’ll add, I didn’t include it, but those boxes have even extended to, we do a new hire box. So as soon as someone accepts our offer, we send a surprise and delight box to them just to say, welcome to the team. So we basically are initiating that engagement from the time that they sign that offer, until their start date. Because we know, the war on talent is out there and you never know who people may be engaged with and we don’t want to lose them, so we picked them for a reason.

Cameron Madill:
I love that. And buyers remorse is very real. The second we buy something and we start thinking maybe there’s something else.

Teshia Davis:
Exactly.

Cameron Madill:
Well, I love that. And you mentioned this, I’d like to segue, I was impressed to see you’ve been recognized as a diversity equity and inclusion leader. And you mentioned some of the work you’ve done, but I’d love to hear a little more about what you’ve done at SECU to increase awareness around DEI overall. And why you think that at work is important in how you’ve grounded in your culture and broader strategy?

Teshia Davis:
Absolutely. I think where it started is the country was watching everything because we had nowhere to go with the stay at home orders. And I will start by saying that SECU has always been positioned very well. We have won a previous award in the past, in the diversity space, but it didn’t necessarily, truly look internally as much, it was more externally focused.

Teshia Davis:
So with the intersection of the black lives matter movement, an election year, just how people were reacting to the pandemic across the country, we really couldn’t sacrifice how our employees felt about it. Some people feel more comfortable talking about things, others don’t. And we really pride ourselves on offering a culture that listens to its employees and ensuring that we are really meeting their needs while working on making sure that we are offering an inclusive work and environment.

Teshia Davis:
So with all that SECU could not afford to be silent. And we really needed to make sure that we had a response that was built on purpose and was representative of our brand. So it really started with myself partnering with our chief marketing officer, at the time, who’s since been promoted to a larger role, but really what our stance was going to be on for DEI and how we were going to showcase that not only to our employees, but also to our members. So from that, we created essentially a DEI roadmap, that was basically, the foundation was how are we going to infuse those practices in all the things that we do, all of our programs, all of our efforts.

Teshia Davis:
So it definitely started with collaborating with an external partner, engaging our board as well and our executive leadership team, by facilitating various round tables, ensuring there was no bias, allowing a safe space for people to just say, “I don’t understand. If I say this, I don’t mean it, but I didn’t think that it was received in the manner that it may have been.” We also created a micro website on our internal platform that really introduced all things related to DEI, various resources, more so with the foundation of education and understanding just so people could really tap into the various demographic. We created affinity groups and we conducted a survey just to see what our DEI engagement looked like. And not that I was entirely surprised, but I think I was surprised at how high that score came in. You just never know until you tap into it.

Teshia Davis:
And really what we learned was we did have an inclusive work environment and it was a byproduct of us being grateful, creative, thoughtful, and just really genuinely thinking about our employees and how we engage with them, and we really fulfill their needs. I mean, I will tell you, Cameron, any survey that we send out, on average we receive 800 comments. My team along with the executive leadership team, we read every comment to know how our employees are feeling and really take actionable results to make sure that they know that their voice is heard, we’ve listened and we’re taking action on it. So hopefully that answers your question.

Cameron Madill:
Yeah, it really does. And that’s a lot of comments to process. So I commend you guys for… It takes a lot of employee engagement.

Teshia Davis:
It does.

Cameron Madill:
My experience at least is people, they don’t fill those things out unless they expect to be heard. They might once or twice, but if they don’t see a feedback loop, they give up, so that’s fantastic.

Teshia Davis:
So true.

Cameron Madill:
I’d love to hear, I have my own take on this, but where do you think other credit unions might be falling short when it comes to their DEI efforts? I think it’s an area that has become more central and important to credit unions, but I remember being surprised how at many credit union conferences, it just wouldn’t even be a topic several years ago when I was seeing it in every other group or community I was in, it was an expected regular topic. And I think that has been shifting, but I’m curious, where do you think credit unions might be falling short and where do you hope the industry as a whole will be moving over the next, let’s say, five years?

Teshia Davis:
Another great question, Cameron. I’ll say, I will start with, I believe many credit union leaders inclusive of credit union HR leaders, they don’t necessarily know where to start. I think they really view the topic as so broad. It’s like, how do I tackle it? Where do I start first? Who do I engage? How do I get buy-in and support? And I will share that myself, as well as our president CEO, our chief growth and marketing officer, along with other senior leaders, we participated in a diversity equity and inclusion program facilitated and sponsored by Georgetown, along with the Credit Union National Association, the Maryland Credit Union National Association. And it was a safe space of credit unions all across the country. And we were all at different places.

Teshia Davis:
But really what I would offer to anyone listening here is, start with your employees. Really assess where you’re at today. Just as I thought, Hey, I think SECU is well positioned, but when we did that survey and it was a very abbreviated survey, not terribly long at all, we were in a better position than I imagined. And we knew where opportunities existed.

Teshia Davis:
Next, I feel like it’s determining what type of organization you want to be. What do you want to stand for? What do you want to be known to your employees as well as your members? And then from there really thinking about what does success look like within a year, three years, five years? It’s not anything that you can tackle overnight and you really need to dissect it and take it into little pieces, if you will. It’s like a puzzle. Before you can see the entire picture, really who you are, keep DEI top of mind in everything that you do.

Teshia Davis:
And I’ll just end with, I think in the next five years for SECU, I would hope to see that we continue to be bold. We transform our leadership, where DEI is thought of in every action that we take. It shows up in our core values daily. It’s what our members see, what they feel when they interact with us. And then I hope that continues to extend itself to our communities and less marginalized groups. That’s essentially what success would look like to me. So again, it’s not anything that you can solve for overnight or in a couple of months, but need to have the vision and then work to get there and you’ll definitely get buy-in and support along the way.

Cameron Madill:
I think that’s great advice. And I think, I don’t know, I guess I always think with DEI that it’s better for people to think of it as a journey than a destination, because-

Teshia Davis:
Absolutely.

Cameron Madill:
Yeah. As you said, it’s just so big and it touches so many things. Honestly, I think you said it well, it’s been a couple years where much of the country has been stuck at home or in a very limited version of the life they want to lead, with a lot of time looking at social media and digital media and things that tend to amp folks up. And I think that, I just always like that journey mindset that there are just some really basic things around tolerance and connection and humanity that everyone wants and everyone can get behind. And if we can facilitate everyone making forward progress, then some really amazing things can happen. But there’s probably not a toolkit that you can just put in place in a quarter or something and have a high functioning organization from an inclusion standpoint.

Teshia Davis:
Right. I mean, definitely, I would say there’s toolkits out there, but nothing that you can tackle overnight. I know myself, I definitely was more of the sprinter than the cross country runner, but one thing I learned early in my career is, when you do pace yourself, as you look back when you hit those milestones, you’ll see how far you’ve come. And I think looking back even a year ago, SECU was already a great organization and we’re just even better.

Cameron Madill:
Yeah. I mean, there’s lots of great frameworks. That’s funny, I just grabbed a book off my shelf called Courageous Conversations About Race, which is the framework that we’ve used. At least my experience is, they’re all very deep and they’re not things that you just, like anything culture related, you just put into place and 90 days later you could say, “Check, we’re done.” That as humans, we all have our own process for growing and changing and evolving, and that often takes safe space as you said.

Teshia Davis:
Exactly. Safe space.

Cameron Madill:
So I’m curious, it sounds like you guys have a really dynamic and wonderful culture. One of the things that sometimes spreadsheet driven boards or executive teams often question when it comes to this topic of people is, what’s the ROI? How do we know if we’re doing the right things? How do we know this is making the organization more successful? And so I’m curious how you think about determining success of your efforts.

Teshia Davis:
I think for me, it’s looking at our various engagement metrics. Although you don’t want to over survey your teams, we already have enough work to do, and we’re trying to balance a lot, but I feel like whether it’s pulse surveys or what have you, I mean, we do an employee engagement survey. We have a wellness survey. We have our DEI survey. We also do a high performance organizational survey. So having these various touchpoints, it gives us a different lens, but essentially what it’s doing is it’s giving us that insight into organizational alignment.

Teshia Davis:
For us, I think, even looking at our hybrid work environment, two years ago, we used to have to have someone in the room. Everyone had to be in the room to make a decision. And now we’re so agile and we pivot so easily to making those decisions that are in the best interest of our employees and our members. I think we see it come out through those engagement metrics. So we also look at member experience metrics. So, we’re listening to our members and what they’re experiencing as they engage with us in our face to face interactions and our virtual platform.

Teshia Davis:
So for me, it’s that frequent deliberate touch points on those things that are really relevant and making sure they’re timely so we can keep that engagement alive. And again, just offering that transparency. You said it earlier, as you survey someone, you need to make sure that you’re boomeranging back to say, “Hey, thank you for sharing. We really appreciate it. And because of that, this is the action that we’re taking.” And I really feel like that’s the essential step for credit unions and various leaders throughout to make sure that they’re really witnessing that ROI.

Cameron Madill:
Nothing worse than asking for feedback and then not responding or closing the loop. It’s like, now I’m angry and fired up and you reminded me of it.

Cameron Madill:
I love that you brought up member experience numbers, because one of the things I was thinking of for this podcast was how, gosh, I don’t know, let’s say like 10 years ago, I remember doing this really great business coaching program. And they talked about how there’s this big focus on branding and marketing and how do you resonate with your target audience? But really it’s like an iceberg. Your brand is what we can see of the iceberg, above the water. But 90% of what happens below the water is really your culture. And the point was that if you don’t have a great culture, that’s aligned with this brand you’re trying to create, which is aligned with your target audience, you’re not going to be able to deliver on it.

Cameron Madill:
As you know, a lot of our audience is credit union marketers, and I’m curious, we just wrote an article about this on CU Inside of how credit unions have an opportunity to do a better job marketing starting with their employees. How do you think about marketing teams and HR teams working well together to achieve their mutually aligned goals? And how do you guys collaborate at SECU?

Teshia Davis:
Honestly, Cameron, I would say that I am married to the marketing team. It is definitely a marriage. We have frequent intentional touchpoints, I would say weekly, but often it’s daily, and that’s probably because we are married. We are so lock in step and there’s just synergy within both of our teams, that it’s amazing. So whenever I’m thinking about communicating out to our employees, I’m immediately engaging with our marketing communications team. And they’re doing the same on their side, so if something comes to their attention, they are like, “Okay, have we engaged Teshia? Let me get her thoughts. And to me, that’s success right there.

Teshia Davis:
I mean, when you think about to your point about branding, branding exists both internally and externally. And we want to make sure that we’re capturing that voice in every touch point that we have. So the same voice that our members see is almost a very similar voice that our employees are experiencing. I would just say we would not be as successful, we would not be where we’re at today if there wasn’t alignment. I hope there’s never a divorce. I’ll say it like that.

Cameron Madill:
That’s good. I was assuming it was a happy marriage, but now I’m glad to know that it’s [crosstalk 00:25:41].

Teshia Davis:
Its a happy marriage. Happy marriage.

Cameron Madill:
Well, I want to ask one bonus question before we move towards the end of the podcast.

Teshia Davis:
Sure.

Cameron Madill:
Which is, I was really impressed to see that you’re the chair of the local United Way. I know that’s a wonderful organization, so thank you for your service. And I’m curious, you’ve probably got your credit union hat or lens, you see the members, you see your employees, but what are you seeing about the world and where it’s at and what it needs through your work with the United Way right now?

Teshia Davis:
Thank you for the question and just the exposure to my work with the United Way. I have the pleasure of being part of the board as well as I do also oversee one of the county boards in the county in which I live in, and we actually have three financial centers in our county as well. For me, I would say, I think there’s so many of us that are living in a bubble. And it’s probably a matter of circumstance just because whether you’re working remotely and all you see is your computer in your office or what your homework setting looks like these days, your dog, your cat, your spouse and kids, et cetera, or it could just be yourself. And for those that are commuting, I think it’s just like, okay, I need to get to work, but I don’t necessarily look around at what what’s going on in our community.

Teshia Davis:
I think for me, the community in which I live, it’s so diverse and there’s so many different pockets, differences, whether it be socioeconomic, income based. And from what I hear more often than not is, people are saying, I didn’t know. I didn’t know that there was a family living in their car because they want to keep their kids in the school system. I didn’t know that someone made the choice to not feed their family because they need to pay that car payment or they didn’t have enough food to eat. I’ve run into people picking up food at the housing authorities, not housing authority, but the food banks, because you would think they had food just because you assume where they live, but you really don’t know their circumstance. So many people are living right above the poverty line.

Teshia Davis:
And we really have to just take a pause and really be thankful for what we do have and really extend our hand to that neighbor. I think that’s what’s been missing. People are so into their bubbles and they don’t look at what’s going around them. And I think it’s just offering more grace, being more compassionate, really looking back at hey, where you may have come from. And I think that also exists within our families as well. It’s not solely our communities, but it’s our families as well.

Teshia Davis:
So that work is the type of work that United Way of Central Maryland is doing, but really taking the blinders off for people to see what’s really going on in our communities. And then further from a DEI lens, just those less marginalized groups, I may live and work 15 miles from Baltimore, but what’s going on in Baltimore and how is that impacting me? And how is that potentially impacting employees that work at SECU because they live in those communities, they serve those communities? So, when a mother’s coming in and she has her child for virtual learning, what is she struggling with? And how can we at SECU help support her?

Teshia Davis:
So I think very easy for me to bridge the gap between the two, just based on the nature of work that SECU does, and having that lens and offering that perspective to other people. It really puts me in a unique position and I’m happy to be able to offer that perspective to people.

Cameron Madill:
Well, thank you for sharing. I think you said it really well that, you started this whole conversation with empathy and leadership, and I think it is one of the many overlapping tragedies of the pandemic has been that so many of us, myself included, have gotten more isolated from other people. And it’s difficult to have empathy if we don’t really understand what people are dealing with. And I’ve seen even my own neighborhood, some really difficult personal situations that literally the person living next door, and these are long term neighbors, a decade, not like somebody’s been there for a few months, and they literally don’t know what’s happening to their neighbor next door. That they’ve got a personal tragedy or a medical emergency. As you said, I feel like my life has become my face on a Zoom bubble, other than my wife and my kid and our parents, pretty limited.

Cameron Madill:
All right. Well, let’s transition to some rapid fire questions. Thanks for all of just the great ideas and wisdom and humanity and inspiration. Yeah, let’s get a little silly, though. Let’s go a different direction.

Teshia Davis:
Okay.

Cameron Madill:
All right. So, first thing that comes to your mind, favorite ice cream?

Teshia Davis:
Cookies and cream.

Cameron Madill:
What is in the trunk of your car right now?

Teshia Davis:
A blanket

Cameron Madill:
Blanket. All right.

Teshia Davis:
It’s very clean. It’s very neat and very organized.

Cameron Madill:
That’s a very clean, good job.

Teshia Davis:
Yes.

Cameron Madill:
If you could have dinner with one historical person, who would it be?

Teshia Davis:
Ooh, historical. Alive, or who’s [crosstalk 00:30:55]?

Cameron Madill:
Whatever works.

Teshia Davis:
I’m going to go with Barack Obama.

Cameron Madill:
Barack Obama.

Teshia Davis:
I want to really go to a party of his, because I think they’d be really good.

Cameron Madill:
I’m sure. All right. What is the best advice you’ve ever received?

Teshia Davis:
Life is shorter than we think. I’ll just expand really quick. If you look at a book, I think it was a history teacher that taught me this. If you look at a book and turn to the page that you are, and then what the average life expectancy is, and then think about the pages of the book, it’s really not that many pages. So live every day to the fullest.

Cameron Madill:
I love it. Yeah. How many more pages do we have? All right. And then lastly, what is a song that you’re embarrassed to admit that you like?

Teshia Davis:
Oh my gosh. I can’t even think of a name. I probably say more of a genre. It’s probably trap music. I am married. We’re about to celebrate 10 years of marriage, and my husband’s been a DJ for 30 years and he’s a diehard hip-hop [inaudible 00:31:53]. So whenever I say trap music, he’s like, “That is not hip-hop.” So I’d say more a genre.

Cameron Madill:
Yep. Those DJs, they can be very opinionated. All right.

Teshia Davis:
They are very opinionated. Thank you.

Cameron Madill:
That’s how they got to be so good at what they do, I’m sure.

Teshia Davis:
It definitely is an art.

Cameron Madill:
Teshia, it’s been a real pleasure having you on. I’m just curious to do a quick final take. Is there anything you didn’t get to you wanted to share or anything you’d like to reiterate to leave our audience with?

Teshia Davis:
Sure. I would say, be purposeful in connecting with those that you work with. I think, to your point earlier, what you said, Cameron, you don’t know what people, what your neighbor may be going through, what have you. The same thing goes for those that you work with. I would say offer grace in acknowledging that we all work differently, especially those of us that are working remotely. So that’s why offering flexibility for your teams, because everyone’s personal and professional lives are now intertwined.

Teshia Davis:
And really just support each other from a mind, body, financial wellness spirit, because we’re all dealing with a lot. And we’re just trying to do the best that we can. And the more support that we get, I feel like the better outcome it will be.

Teshia Davis:
With that, I thank you so much for this opportunity to engage with you today. You’ve been a true pleasure. I’m happy to be here. So thank you for the invitation.

Cameron Madill:
All right. Well, thanks so much for having you. You were wonderful and I was just going to close by saying you should work in HR. You’re really good at this people thing. It looks like a good landing spot.

Teshia Davis:
Thank you.

Cameron Madill:
Thanks and good luck with all your continued good work at SECU and in your community.

Teshia Davis:
Thanks, Cameron.

Cameron Madill:
All right, folks. Thanks for joining. Again, I really enjoyed that conversation with Teshia. I’d love to share some of my key takeaways.

Cameron Madill:
The first one was one that I think is just really smart, that they, after examining the changes in their culture by going to a hybrid remote and in- person model, they decided to make that permanent in the summer of 2021, just to create some stability going forward.

Cameron Madill:
The second one I thought was just great to hear, and I think kudos to them and all the many credit unions that have had similar results, but that they’ve kept turnover flat over the last three years, by really focusing on creating a sense of belonging at work. And in the new normal, that’s even more important than it was before.

Cameron Madill:
And I thought some of the programs that they were running were very innovative, including the regular surprise and delight boxes. I mean, sending those both to employees at random times as a way to build connection and fandom among the families of employees, as well as the employees themselves, but also sending that box on the very day that someone accepts a job offer. Having a virtual talent show and awards session. I love this newsletter they have called Be Well, that just sends out wellness resources, really trying to care for the employees holistically. The monthly company wide strategic briefing sessions that they have with their CEO and leadership team that anyone can join, as well as the creation of affinity groups and bringing in dynamic outside speakers to engage with the company in these groups and as a whole.

Cameron Madill:
I really enjoyed talking with Teshia about her DEI work. And I thought there were a couple really intriguing things that they have done that I had not heard elsewhere. I thought the creation of a micro site that is for internal use is really built around education, seemed like a great tool, as well as setting up round tables and really building out a DEI roadmap, acknowledging that this is not something that they’re going to do in a quarter or a year that they want to be integrating it into their overall strategy and thinking, you know, 1, 3, 5 years in the future. As well as I think the importance of really working hard to create public statements that were built on their purpose and aligned with their purpose and working closely with the marketing team to do that.

Cameron Madill:
I love Teshia’s phrase about how to align marketing and culture. They are married to each other. What an interesting and wonderful way to frame it and what would the world be like if all organizations had HR teams and marketing teams that were married to each other. And it sounded like just for them keeping that weekly cadence to meet up and make sure things have aligned a minimum level of connection have been very successful.

Cameron Madill:
And then lastly, I was really, I guess, just impressed to hear about Teshia’s work with United Way. I think that’s such a great organization, and I really resonated with her comment that many of us are in a bubble right now, and that there are so many people struggling out there that we’re less likely to see because we move to our own little bubbles, right, for a whole variety of reasons. And it kind of cuts ourselves off from much of the rest of our communities, including even our neighbors. And so I resonate with her advice or request for all of us to extend a hand to our neighbors and grow our compassion for others.

Cameron Madill:
All right. Thank you so much for joining us today for another great episode. Until the next time, I wish you the best of luck in making your credit union remarkable.