By Ray Birch
MADISON, Wis.—Credit unions will not be able to effectively move forward on their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts without someone inside the organization leading the charge, according to one credit union.
That’s the reason UW Credit Union moved to create a new position, director of cultural competency and inclusion, and hired Sheila Milton to take the role. UWCU President Paul Kundert said the credit union came to the conclusion such a position is needed after first trying to drive greater diversity, equity inside the credit union without any one person formally in charge of the effort.
“We started this journey here a number of years ago. And we didn't start by adding a director of cultural competency and inclusion because we didn't realize at the time it was a need,” explained Kundert. “At the time, we felt it would not be best to ask one person to carry the responsibility to effect change within our organization.”
But the $3.5-billion credit union eventually found out—at least for UWCU—it was not the right decision.
“I think there are certain things you can get done to drive greater diversity, equity and inclusion at your credit union without a person in charge of the work,” said Kundert. “But what you can get done that way is limited if you are a large organization.”
The CEO explained what UWCU experienced that really led to creating the position that Milton filled in September 2019.
“We started back in 2015, wanting to become a more culturally competent organization,” said Kundert. “We brought in an expert to help train all of our managers and leaders. We then organized employee resource groups so people could get together and discuss diversity…However we eventually realized there's another layer of understanding we did not have within the organization, another layer of expertise. We knew that to keep our effort going we really needed a full-time position working on this.”
Paul Kundert
Initial Shortcomings
Kundert said the credit union was able to tackle the “low-hanging fruit” without a leader of its diversity programs, and it initially leveraged its HR team to drive the internal human resources component of diversity training. But there were some shortcomings.
“For example, we did employee engagement surveys, but we never bothered to break down engagement by gender, by ethnicity … ,” said Kundert, adding UWCU had succeeded in driving greater diversity, equity and inclusion without a director leading the way. “There were things we learned but we did not really dig into why does a certain group have a different experience here, for example. There's some really challenging things that come up that you need an expert to help you address. For example, how do you go about correcting bad member behavior towards our staff? The member is always right, correct? That is an interesting and complex issue. And that is what we found as we got deeper into our work without a director on board—there are just a lot of complex and challenging issues you will eventually encounter.”
Kundert also said UWCU, which serves the University of Wisconsin, was able, through attrition and new hiring practices to evolve its staff to become more reflective of its member base. But then it struggled with how to make those same changes at the leadership levels, since turnover there is much slower.
Not Just About HR
Now in the new position for more than six months, Milton said that diversity, equity and inclusion efforts—often referred to as DEI--include much more than just the HR component.
“Diversity programs should address your products, your image to the community, your vendors, your members … you have to think about not only inside the CU but outside as well,” Milton told CUToday.info. “I think someone in this position should have HR experience, talent management experience and be someone who can play outside of HR. In this role, there's definitely things we will be doing internally to attract and retain employees, but there are things that we will be doing that are well beyond that. For example, maybe not this year, but in the future we would be looking at supplier diversity, and working very closely with our community partnership groups. These are all things that are beyond HR.”
Sheila Milton
Milton came to UW Credit Union from CUNA Mutual Group where she served as the director of talent management and a member of the human resources leadership team. During her time at CUNA Mutual Group, Milton created the Women’s Executive Leadership Institute and implemented a contemporary Learning Management System. Outside of HR, she has worked in both corporate and business unit level roles to support legislative affairs, marketing, sales, finance, legal, technology, customer service and manufacturing.
Looking Like the Members
“I am charged with making sure we create an inclusive culture and that we have folks that look like our members at all levels of the organization,” Milton said. “All of what we are doing here with diversity, equity and inclusion is a business priority. We want to make sure we change before we have to change. One of the first things I'm charged with doing is to come up with a diversity, equity and inclusion vision statement that will be aspirational and guide the work that we're going to do. And then come up with a multi-year strategy to drive change and inclusive feedback from all levels in the organization.”
As for Kundert, he is now able to look back on how the credit union began its diversity journey.
“We started doing this without anyone in charge of our efforts and had some success,” he said. “But we eventually realized we needed a person to be behind all that we are doing to support diversity, equity and inclusion at UW. If you are a larger credit union and committed to this, you will soon realize this will take the full-time attention of someone.”