Notes from — March 14,2008
As with other HR Council meetings, we opened with a brief review of the previous meeting. This meeting was held at Cooperative Services Inc in College Park.
In the roundtable discussion, topics ranged from a variety as usual, and were as follows:
Copies of files for attorneys: One CU asked if anyone charges a fee for making copies of employee personnel files when requested by the courts or attorneys. Most CU’s agreed that a fee can be charged but fortunately many have not had to deal with this.
Employee records: How long do we keep employee records such as performance records, transfers and the like? Some keep indefinitely while others purge after three years.
Email Policy: All CU’s have an email policy that discloses all emails can be monitored. Also noted was that some phone systems allow for tracking of dropped calls and quality service.
Policies and Procedures: One CU is in the process of updating their policy and procedures. Possibly establishing rules concerning cell phone usage and implementing an introductory period.
Approving Loans: Who can approve loans for the employees? Some CU’s will only allow Senior Managers to approve the loans for their employees while others allow the Branch Managers to do so. Group advised CU to update their current policy allowing only Senior Managers to process employee loans to help cut down favoritism in the loan decision.
Mortgage department pay scale: this topic was revisited again; one CU is in the process of changing the way they pay their mortgage officers. The problem they’re facing with their current incentive plan is employees are more than doubling their base pay. Most CU’s do not pay incentives but their annual pay is above market.
Pension plans: After researching several different options, one CU has changed their retirement plans from CUNA to Great West. This new option will allow the employees to pay a percentage of their monies in order to have a specialist manage their accounts.
Vendors: The question was asked if the CU handles background checks on the vendors they use? Most CU’s rely on the outside vendor to handle background investigations since they are paying the vendor for a service. A good example would be the use of a temp service. Let the agency know up front that the candidate must have good credit and the temp service will pull the credit and provide you with a copy to make sure you’re comfortable with the person they have selected.
Performance Pro: A few CU’s spoke about this product and really like the format. There is a scorecard in which the following categories are rated: service, goals, internal growth and initiatives.
Interviews: How are they handled at each CU? Majority of the CU use the following steps: initial phone screening followed by an in person interview with HR and ending with an interview with the department manager. Some even pull a credit check before conducting the in person interview with HR.
Probationary/Introductory period: all have introductory periods in place and feel comfortable letting an employee go during that time. On the separation notice it is written “employee released during introductory period or employee released during initial 90 days”. To avoid problems it was suggested to not use “probationary period”.
Recruitment: Always a hot topic for Human Resources. Challenges were shared across the board by many of the participants as well as sharing some names of good candidates currently in the job market.
Next meeting to be held sometime June 2008 with the location to be determined. |
