Talent is increasingly becoming hard to find in the credit union landscape. There is especially a need to find talent in technology-related departments as many financial institutions continue to embrace AI and digital banking to bring in younger consumers.

Sarah Cooke got the chance to talk with PSCU Chief Talent Officer Lynn Hecker to discuss the ongoing war for talent and how credit unions can look for the people they need. They also discuss DEI and its continued role in credit unions.

Read the full transcript here:

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Sarah Cooke  00:12

Welcome, everybody to this edition of The Credit Union Connection. I am here today with the lovely and wonderful PSCU Chief Talent Officer Lynn Heckler. Welcome.

Lynn Heckler  00:22

Thank you, Sarah, it's great to be here.

Sarah Cooke  00:24

It is awesome to have you. You know, I think HR is one of those things that is so fascinating to me, like the psychology of it, the law of it, there's like so many moving parts and just individual people, just all the people, and building culture and things like that. So I want to talk to you a little bit about, you know, PSCU as well as what the credit unions are doing today. But a little more broadly, what trends are you seeing in talent management today that excite you?

Lynn Heckler  00:57

Oh, my gosh, well, I guess I guess we'll stay well, if it's about exciting, I guess we'll stay away from the ongoing talent shortage, right?

Sarah Cooke  01:06

The interview that's later then you'll get to it.

Lynn Heckler  01:10

and kind of talk more about what's, uh, what's what's trending that is, is interesting. So of course, you know, can't have a conversation like this without talking about the impact of AI, artificial intelligence on the workforce, and how it's literally transforming jobs as we speak. And so there's, there's that interesting dynamic, but it's also the evolution of the workplace that we had seen, that was really accelerated by the pandemic, this, this shift from office space work to a primarily distributed workforce. This, this keen focus, and almost almost demand for work life balance, or work life harmonization from the employees, and also, this idea of, you know, primarily full time employees to more of portfolio workers, you know, companies using a lot more what I call like just-in-time, talent, or gig workers to supplement and not not making that, you know, expensive and relatively permanent commitment to full time workers. So we definitely see that as a trend. And then, of course, it's interesting, because DEI, which has been for the past, you know, arguably decade and a half, a major force, the DEI, in the workforce, we see DEI really evolving into more is opposed to, you know, like, a DEI program into more of a of a true cultural underpinning. And we can talk more about any one of those or or

Sarah Cooke  03:05

whatever you choose. Yeah, no, and the next thing I was gonna get to which you kind of talked about a few things that are relevant, which, which of these talent management trends or whatever scare you, like, or scare others, because I think, you know, things like AI, people are scared, their jobs are gonna go away, or they're not going to be able to figure out how to use or it's just overwhelming things like DEI, you know, that can be overwhelming when you're looking at doing an enterprise level. That's a lot. That's a lot. So, what scares you the most?

Lynn Heckler  03:40

Well, I honestly, for me, it's neither one of those things. It's actually the ongoing talent shortage, because what the demographics are telling us is that it's not going to be over soon, that this is this is not a oh, gee, you know, like, like, we had a housing market crash, and then things came back up a few years later, it's like this ongoing talent shortage is actually going to be a marathon. And I think, to really succeed, and to really excel, credit unions or all employers are gonna have to shift the mindset of, well, whatever talent I need, I can just go to the grocery store and buy it, you know, I can just hire externally, and that talent is going to be available, and I'm going to be able to afford it and they're gonna want to, you know, come to work in St. Petersburg, Florida, or wherever it is that you're recruiting. But you know what, that is just not the case. And certain segments are worse than others, obviously tech and cybersecurity huge, huge shortages in those areas. And those are areas that credit unions absolutely need to stock their shelves, if we're using the grocery store analogy with employees. So um, So that is probably the thing that I think should be driving the most change in how employers think about the labor market in general. So that I think the AI and the DEI, I find that part exciting. And, you know, you mentioned that a lot of people are scared of the AI, we find it that we're, we're looking at it curiously, you know, through the lens of fascination and innovation. And I'll just give you one like, super easy example is, oh, an HR function like job descriptions, right? Wow. Very tedious. Like, you used to have to subscribe to some job description library that you had to pay a monthly subscription to, like, those companies must be out of business now. Right? Because literally, you go to Chat GPT and type in CHRO, job description, and literally, literally, three seconds, it spits out something that you barely have to edit. So that's just like one little simple example. We've been using AI in recruitment. For years, a lot of these tools that are marketed the search engine tools that like go out and crawl LinkedIn and post your jobs for you. Those are AI based. And it's been around for a while. It's just these, you know, and I'm not the tech guru, but the these large language models like Chat GPT that are making it now available, more available for public consumption. Right? So we definitely don't see it as, as taking jobs away from people. In fact, we I look at it as being able to make jobs more interesting, because it's pretty low value, to have somebody sitting there and paying them an hourly rate to draft a job description from scratch that AI can spit out in three seconds. So anyway, I'll stop there.

Sarah Cooke  07:03

Yeah, no, because you were one of the first if I recall, correctly, one of the very first to start sounding alarm within the credit union market about the shortage of talent, the war on the war for talent. Because I think I'm gonna mix up my whole interview flow here. But one of the things that I think has been an issue for Koreans for a while one, they've got, you know, brand awareness recognition among consumers to a degree, but as an employer, how do credit union get to they be that employer of choice, nobody graduates college and says, I'm going to a credit union, you know, they say, I'm going to be a lawyer, firemen, whatever it is, they will say, I'm gonna go to a credit union. So how do grades get to that point?

Lynn Heckler  07:47

Right? Isn't that true? And nobody gets out of college and says, I want to go to work for a credit union service provider, like I didn't know who it is. But great question. So when you don't have a consumer brand, when you don't have something that is, you know, a lot of folks don't even know the difference between a bank and a credit union. I think the only way to become a destination employer, an employer of choice, is to create an irresistible culture to create a great workplace that people want to get into that are lined up. You know, nothing makes me happier when somebody says, I've been trying to get into PSE for years. Right? That that it is, it is a place that people want to work. And the reason that they want to work there is that you're able to for the next generation of talent anyway, pin your culture, rooted in purpose and meaning, right, and what better place than the credit union industry, the credit union industry is about purpose and meaning and improving the financial lives of regular people. So the next gen talent, they want to be involved in something bigger than themselves, Sarah. So what a great way to create your irresistible culture is to make sure that you're you know, I hate to say selling that, but you're using that as part of your employer value proposition, right. What is that unique distinction that PSCU or XYZ credit union is offering to an employee, if I've got three offers on the table, I've got three job offers, and they're essentially the same job and they're essentially the same pay what's going to make me go toward PSCU as opposed to these other organizations and honing that unique employer value proposition and building out your employee experience based on your culture. So so that's the secret ingredient I mean, that that is how we approached it is is that it all started with purpose and passion about serving credit unions and serving credit union members. And then from there, we grew it to be, well, you know, how do we create this culture of purpose and meaning and belonging? Right. And that's where your DEI levers come in. How do you make people feel? Oh, this is the place I really want to be. And then when they're there, look, we get job offers all the time. You know, recruiters call, I want those folks not to even take the call from the recruiter. I want them not to even pick up the phone because they're so happy where they are that there's nothing that recruiter could offer them I'll make Yeah, other than a million dollars more per year. That would take them away. Let's be real we have to

Sarah Cooke  10:53

be right right? No, and that's perfect. Perfectly ties right back to that war for talent. You know, a lot of times credit unions talk about oh, are people are the difference yet. As a board member, I see pay scales and things like that of industry wide or I see you know, cranes versus banks and what they pay, you know, the front line, who are your most important connection to your members and yada yada and all the words, well put your money behind it. Right? I mean, that's, that bothers me important is money. It's not only money, though, to your point. It's not just about money. People want to feel like they matter. Like they like they're doing something that matters. And credit unions just don't play play that card enough. Like they're it's it's just too obvious for them or something to see what extraordinary work they're doing. And the same thing.

Lynn Heckler  11:45

It does actually make sense when you when you take a taste of other industries, even in financial services, you just step right over the line into the banking industry. And they're not talking about improving people's financial lives. They're talking about how much can they get for an NSF pay?

Sarah Cooke  12:03

Right? Well, if you look at the credit union marketing, I'm going to... it's all bill rates. I'm sorry, like not ever there's there's certainly a lot of them are getting much better. But yeah, there's a lot of it ends up coming down to rates. And yes, of course, price matters. But yes, I think as consumers as employees, we want to feel like what we do matters, which is why I work for myself.

Lynn Heckler  12:26

You just bring up a really interesting point, Sarah, when you said consumers as employees, and I think of it our employees as consumers, right, because the consumer experience and how it's, it's changed to like instant gratification, you know, if the Amazon page doesn't load fast enough, we're irritated. And that, you know, if it takes more than a day and a half to get to my door, I'm irritated that employees live that as consumers. And so they're expecting a similar experience when they come into your workplace, right. And you're sending a message to them from the time they apply for your job. If you make them fill out a piece of paper, if there's any credit union listening to this, that still uses paper applications, job applications, right, you have signaled to the employee before they've worked their first day at at your organization that they are in for a less than progressive and a less than modern, and a less than consumer driven employee experience. So get rid of the paper employee experience is from the ad that you placed on LinkedIn until after the employee leaves the organization right as soon to be retiree me as CEO. I'm still going to be a brand ambassador for their brand as an employer. Right. And so I need to feel as good leaving as I did when they were recruiting.

Sarah Cooke  14:02

Exactly, yes, yes. And I want to... I had no clue until the PSCU Co-Op combination was announced. I had no clue how large PSCU was. Yeah.

Lynn Heckler  14:17

Yeah. The combined organization has 5500 employees.

Sarah Cooke  14:23

Yeah. And that's huge. So a count... you I mean, just showing up every day to me and your position. But so what are what are three or three or five or whatever top things that you feel like you've accomplished and and talk a little bit about how you did that and kept your eyes on the prize? Oh, wow.

Lynn Heckler  14:43

Well, that that is a great question. And And honestly, I, I, I will say that two of the top two for me. During my 22 years at PSCU Oh, my longest my longest tenure of any employer in my 38 year career, but was being able to help define and evolve the culture at PSCU because I do feel that it's a strategic differentiator for the company, not not just for attracting employees, but for how we work and for retaining top talent. So that has, that has really been number one for me. And I could literally talk for days on and how you create a culture because it's not, you know, it's not one thing, it's more of 1000, tiny touches. And so journey mapping, and figuring out so like, right now, we're going through at the new combined organization, okay, we had these two great cultures, right. And they were aligned in many ways, but they were different, in many ways. And let's kind of baseline on both of those. And then let's figure out what that aspirational culture needs to be for the new organization and kind of take the best of both. And what's the roadmap to get from here, these two individual cultures to their, which is our new aspirational culture, and we're doing that work right now. And it is fun, and fascinating and hard. So that would probably be my top thing. One of the things, the other things that I'm most proud of, or one of the things that I would say, has been the most personally as well as professionally rewarding has been the work in DEI. And it's, you know, we started out maybe 15 years ago or so, in this space, just feeling like, hey, you know, we wanted to do this internally. Because it was the right thing to do. I made the business case, like, everybody's bought into the business case for DEI. But it's really about how you execute on that, how you conceive it, and how you bring it to life in an organization that makes a difference, because we all know those companies. Yeah, we do DEI. But it's like, check, it's check the box DEI Oh, yeah, our leaders have had training, and we have a dei statement, and we've joined these groups. So so we do DEI. But but that's not it, at all of what it can be. And when I say, you know, it became a core value of our organization. And it became a core value, because of the work that the employees and the leaders did to create this culture of belonging, culture of inclusion and culture of belonging with, like a deep underlying commitment to the tenants of DEI, which are so beautifully tied to the purpose and meaning of non discrimination in the credit union principles. So it's like all this, this, you know, lovely, intertwined thing, but it had to be. It had to be fueled, you know, the fire had to be stoked, and there was pushback, and there was why, why do we even need this stuff? You know, I think everybody's equal. We don't we, you know, we don't need this. But it's, it has just been a labor of love. And now with how evolved it is, I feel like, it's crazy, but I can step away. And I know that it's gonna go on I you know, I know that it's going to continue. So that's probably the those are those are really my top two. Yes, I absolutely built the HR function kind of from the ground up there. It was they it was still called personnel, personnel. That's how old I am Sarah. Personnel. So, so yeah, I mean, I, I built all that stuff, the, you know, the talent programs and the, you know, the, the talent acquisition even evolved the Employee Relations aspects of it. We started with employee engagement probably again, like 12, 15 years ago. And then, probably the third thing that I'm most proud of is last year, which would have been my last full year of work, because I'm leaving in April, we were recognized both by Forbes and by Gallup as the best place to work so that those were like, those were big and not like personal accomplishments, but accomplishments of the team that I feel I had something to do and leading. Absolutely.

Sarah Cooke  19:49

And I think, to your point too, about not only knowing the AI is important, but then actually operationalizing it is something called between people trip over for sure. I mean, I can't. Yeah, a lot of movement,

Lynn Heckler  20:05

we spent a lot of time years, like probably five years in that awareness space. So we were building our BRGs. And that's really fun and, you know, getting getting people involved in, you know, getting our teams channels together and awareness, awareness, awareness. But it wasn't until maybe five years ago, or maybe a little longer ago, that we really figured out, hey, as part of our roadmap for DEI, we operationalize this into not just our talent processes, but our business processes. And so even getting it really in there in the, in the talent process does take some work, you know, diverse slates, and you have to really look at, you know, how are you making sure that you have the right up flow of diverse talent into your succession planning? And what about top of funnel? You know, are we recruiting in places that give us enough qualified diverse candidates to be able to present diverse slates for every leadership position? So you know, those kinds of things are? That's sort of the heavy lifting, oh, and the metrics, the metrics, the metrics, the metrics. So we've been refining those metrics for years. And now they're, they're public knowledge, right? They're out in the public domain. And we, you know, they're not exactly where we want them to be by any stretch. They're aspirational, for sure. But we feel that sharing them is the right thing to do.

Sarah Cooke  21:37

No transparency about it as well. Critical. Yep. Yes. And I love that. You also mentioned you've been doing this for 15 years, the DEI program in one it's a journey. It's not a training course that you just check the box, right? Sure. So so many jumped on the bandwagon when George Floyd was killed. Yeah. It's, it angers me that it took that for the world to notice. Oh, maybe we should be... Maybe we should pay attention to this. Yeah.

Lynn Heckler  22:09

And it's interesting, because that was like, and that's one dimension of diversity. It's race. Right. But look, race it, it took 400 years for systemic racism to be built in, in this country. It's not going to take four years to dismantle it. And so what's what's disappointing are those that a lot of those that jumped on the bandwagon after George Floyd's murder, I'm, I'm glad they did jump on the bandwagon, a lot of jumped off the bandwagon. Right, as as the economy got tight economic uncertainty, guess what positions were getting cut. It was the head of dei positions. They felt like oh, you know, this goes for lastin first out or whatever. But there's still enough. There was still enough incremental commitment from those incidents. And it wasn't just, you know, George, but it was Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery That, that are keeping the momentum going even through the backlash, right, that DEI backlash, if you will, we've actually come through that stronger because we've engaged everyone in the conversation, right? So DEI is for everyone, because everyone has some dimension of diversity to the first thought, right? Now, there's a lot of folks with invisible, you know, invisible disabilities, for example, or, you know, folks that are taking care of people at home that have disabilities, folks that are neurodivergent. And then there's just so many, so many aspects to diversity that we've, we've kind of evolved it to make sure people know, you know, just to be the elephant on the table. You know, we had some of our white male cisgendered employees coming to us saying, hey, what about us, you know, everybody else participates in diversity. What about us, and it was like, this is for you as well. And essentially, it's at the at the base of it. It's about respect, right? It's about respect for everyone. And engaging allies through through this process has been absolutely key to making it work. So that was a way that we ended up getting some of our strongest allies was through the DEI backlash conversations which those were not easy.

Sarah Cooke  24:48

Yeah, no, no, I've definitely I've debated the issue with people with people. It doesn't, it does, it does. Because you know, Know, some, some people get the feeling that when support is provided to others who need it in the moment, it's taken away from them. And that's not necessarily the case. We can support everybody in different ways and expression.

Lynn Heckler  25:14

It's not pie. There's enough to go around.

Sarah Cooke  25:17

Yeah. So I could go on all day. You see you, as you mentioned, you, you, you will announced your retirement and congratulations. They'll be missing you and your voice. Hopefully not too much in the gray market. We'll see what happens. But so what are your Do you have any big plans for your last day at PSCU?

Lynn Heckler  25:41

So they're having a party for me in March, and I'm very much looking forward to that. But you know, now I plan I plan to on my last day, I plan to be just like every other employee and turning my equipment and my keys in my band. But it has just been such an amazing ride with pfcu that, even though I won't be working there on a day-to-day basis, I'm still so connected. You know, there's lifelong relationships that are built when you work this closely with people for so many years. And I still plan to volunteer, I plan to support the credit union industry in any way that I can, Sarah. But my real plans for like the day after I retire, yeah, are to ride my horses. Yes. Spend more time with my kids and my husband. And I've got some great trips planned from now from April through the end of the year. So, you know, just just really wanting to take a little bit of a breath. But I will be at GAC. And look for this probably going to be my last industry conference with PSCU. So that should be a great one. Yeah,

Sarah Cooke  27:00

yeah, for sure. And you're going to come to our reception, right? thing a little karaoke, if you will. 

Lynn Heckler  27:09

After a little liquid courage, Sarah.

Sarah Cooke  27:12

Yes, yes, we all need that. Well, not me, but everybody else. All right. So always close these interviews out with final thoughts. Lynn, if there's what do you want to emphasize? What did we touch on? What's your final thought you want to share with our audience?

Lynn Heckler  27:29

Oh, my gosh. So, you know, we actually covered a lot. And if there is, one, one thing that I would emphasize, that I already mentioned is, is please make sure to leverage the purpose and meaning of the work that we do in the credit union industry, because that is a secret ingredient for credit unions that I don't think we've optimized. And the reality is the talent out there. They want to connect to purpose and meaning, right? You're not recruiting Wolf of Wall Street folks anymore. This generation is very socially responsible. And they they want to know about sustainability, and they want to work in a place that offers purpose and meaning so so please leverage that.

Sarah Cooke  28:22

Yes. And exactly what cranes are about making them feel like they belong, right. So thank you so much for your time today. Appreciate it. Lynne. Great. Rest your day. I will see you in DC in DC in DC. Thanks.

Lynn Heckler  28:36

Thank you, Sarah.