Closing the purpose gap

When your employees understand and embrace your organization’s purpose, they are inspired to do great work and are more committed to delivering on your credit union’s promise. Credit union’s embracing the people-helping-people mantra are, by design, purpose-driven, right? So, in other words there is no purpose gap in credit unions.

I challenge that notion — I believe, that, as a movement, we have been leading with our outcomes not our purpose and this has created a purpose gap.

Please allow me to prove my point. If I were to review 10 credit union homepages — what will I find? Most likely it will be product promotions featuring rates and fees front and center. If I were to interview your frontline staff and ask them “why should I join your credit union?” I suspect I’ll hear because “the credit union will save you money.” These are outcomes, these are not purpose-driven responses. This means we have a purpose gap. And that’s why, we chose Purpose as our first Imperative for 2020.

Research also supports this purpose gap. PwC’s Strategy&recently conducted a survey with 540 participants from across industries, regions, and levels. The goal of the survey was to better understand how people feel at work and how to better engage and motivate them to bring their best to work every day in order to further the company’s agenda.

 

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