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• Good data with fairly recent statistical research.

  Anonymous

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• I would love to see an article on what the industry is doing on benefits.

  Anonymous

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• I highly doubt the average turnover at credit unions is only 12%. At SAFE Credit Union we keep detailed turnover records. We record in detail the reasons for turnover. Our turnover in 2005 was nearly three times the average you report. We know our turnover is high but we also know that many of the credit unions in our area have similar turnover statistics--they just don't keep records like we do. Our back office turnover is about 12%. But our front office member contact positions have high turnover. Tellers and platform staff turnover is close to 50%. Turnover has increased as we have added accountability for sales in addition to the service metrics we have always had. Many of our front line staff do not intend to make a career in the credit union. They work at the credit union while attending school. I agree that the cost of turnover is as high as you estimate it to be. An unknown cost of turnover is the impact on member service. We have had to invest large sums in making our systems easier to learn and more error proof because we have to shorten the learning curve so that staff are competent quickly. We can't take long to train someone who is only on the job on average one year. High turnover means we have a full time recruiting staff and a very large training staff. We run classes for new hires all the time just to keep up. What are we doing to combat turnover? We are paying a premium to tellers. We call it teller factor pay so that they have a monetary incentive to stay on the job. Tellers at SAFE don't do much sales--they process transactions and make qualified referrals to the platform staff. We are paying the platform staff generous sales incentives and we incent them for high scores on our mystery shops that measure member service. We are training our supervisors and managers in how to bond with employees and create a positive work environment. We have improved our screening process for new hires to get a better fit between what our culture is and the people we hire. We have made turnover goals a part of each supervisors evaluation and each recruiter is evaluated on the average length of employment of those that they hire.

  Anonymous

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• For two years we had 0 turn over and our average tenure was 10+ years. Now in the first 5 months of 2006, we have had 2 long time managers resign (1 left to return to Germanyand 1 retired) and 1 full time teller and 1 part time. This equates to one fifth of our staff, and very strerssful for me as CEO of a 41 million asset CU with 8 locations in two states. I wish I could set up a training department but I can't. I read a lot and articles like this is some of the best education I can get. We train with computer servers and have different test for our employees on different things, we just did a continuing education paper on SAR's. By the way I also handle compliance. Thanks for sharing the insights of the large cu's, I read and I learn.

  Virginia Smith

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