Providing employees with fair compensation and opportunities to grow will only take your credit union so far. While competitive wages are one way to help retain employees, ultimately that’s not what will keep them happy. The day-to-day environment within your credit union and their relationships with management are the areas that can make or break the Member Service Representative (MSR) experience. MSRs are the glue in a credit union. They have the closest relationship with members and work to meet their needs each and every day. If MSRs are unhappy, it weakens their ability to serve members and should they continue to be dissatisfied, your credit union won’t be able to retain them. Here’s how you can keep your MSRs from quitting.
Engagement
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A huge contributor to MSR satisfaction is their level of engagement. Unengaged employees quickly become apathetic and unenthused about their job. Engagement will not only build a closer manager-employee relationship, but it will also help open up the conversation between employees across the board. The United States average for employee engagement is just 68%, and organizations who push past that to achieve 70, 75, or even 80 percent engagement tend to have a much better work environment. Provide several touch points for MSRs to engage at work. Whether it be a casual weekly check in with their manager or a monthly lunch, these types of engagements build camaraderie within a credit union and help to keep employees happy.
Feedback
You can improve the MSR experience if you don’t know what the issues are. Getting regular MSR feedback will allow your credit union to identify areas of improvement and the opportunity to continually improve the employee experience. For best results, use a mixture of anonymous and personal feedback. There is some great information your management can obtain through conversations with MSRs, but there are some things they might not be comfortable sharing in a face-to-face conversation. Surveys are an efficient way to get anonymous feedback, and this allows MSRs to get more candid with their feedback.
Trust
One of the most important factors in building MSR satisfaction is trust, but this isn’t something that can be built overnight. MSRs should feel as though they can rely on their coworkers and management. Building a deep level of trust with MSRs will help them feel more comfortable coming forward with member related issues, or in-office problems. Trust is a huge contributor to MSR retention because if they trust their coworkers and management it’s going to lead to a safe and comfortable workspace, which many would be reluctant to leave. It will take some time to build a deep level of trust with MSRs, but it all starts with their first interaction and must be maintained throughout their career.
Member service representatives are the face of your credit union and cultivating good talent and keeping them can be a challenge. MSRs have a tough job as they take on the brunt of angry and frustrated members. However, their job and experience with your credit union should not be frustrating. Failure to communicate and build relationships with MSRs will certainly lead to dissatisfaction and eventually a breaking point where they start quitting left and right. Through continued conversation, engagement, feedback, and trust, your credit union will be able to keep MSRs happy and excited about their role.
