The Financial Communicator

Employee retention is vital to the success of every Canadian small business. When talented employees leave, it disrupts operations and hurts productivity—seriously affecting the bottom line. That's why proactive retention strategies are key to nurturing an engaged, thriving workforce. Here's what they are and how to implement them.

Charley Butler (she/her), Chief Pension Officer, and Michael Cherny (he/him), Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI), received the 2023 Women in Capital Market's Champions of Change award for their contributions as leaders pushing advancement boundaries in the Canadian finance industry. Both executives have brought organization-wide value by helping Ontario Teachers' to continue to embed DEI deeply into its culture: Butler as a senior leader and through her work as the executive sponsor of the Multicultural@Teachers' Employee Resource Group (ERG), and Cherny through his work leading the organization's DEI strategy. A proud trans man, Cherny is also a passionate advocate for the 2SLGBTQ+ community. Ontario Teachers' sat down with both award winners to learn more about their commitment to advancing DEI efforts in the workplace.

The Hartford’s innovative leadership development program helps both participants and managers enhance their leadership skills and create an inclusive environment for all. It's well established that corporate America, including the financial services industry, lacks diversity in management. Learn here one thing The Hartford is doing to address the problem.

It's well established that corporate America, including the financial services industry, lacks diversity in management. People of Color are hired less frequently, experience lower promotion rates and voluntarily leave at higher rates in most financial institutions. And, when organizations do engage in diversity initiatives, they often focus on “fixing People of Color” as if they are the primary problem. Here's what The Hartford is doing differently that all organizations can.

Diversity is incredibly important to a company’s workforce. Not only does it ensure that workforces reflect the populations they draw from, but it also helps drive innovation and supports revenue growth. But in pursuit of diversity, companies often focus only on representation when that is only part of the equation. Creating an inclusive culture where everyone in your company feels included, supported and respected is critical.

Before President Joe Biden made it a national holiday in 2021, in response to 2020s human rights movement, The Hartford began honoring Juneteenth as a company holiday. But the organization had a strong history of supporting the holiday's celebration in the City of Hartford, where it's headquartered, well before that. Learn why it’s a signal of workplace equity to make Juneteenth more than a day off for employees.

Aging is an uncomfortable topic that people have struggled to discuss since ancient times. That same discomfort exists in organizational diversity and inclusion (D&I) initiatives, too, and failing to face it head-on may result in age discrimination complaints. While many CEOs experience success with overall D&I programs, a PwC study found only 8 percent of CEOs target age-related D&I in their policies. Click on the link above to read more about how to address this issue.

Organizational leaders must develop a collaborative leadership culture that facilitates employee engagement if they expect to achieve institutional goals and objectives. Commercial banks are no different, especially in the credit environment they now face. In the post-global financial crisis economy, alleviating financial threats is critical to preventing financial losses. HR and credit administrators must work collaboratively to ensure bankers get proper training to avert financial losses. But, all bank employees must work as a team and understand the key role they each play in creating a culture that reduces credit risk, increasing customer satisfaction and retention and encouraging a positive employee experience across the institution. In this 2016 blog post, I showed bank leaders how to achieve that aim. (**This is a blog post I pitched, researched, and wrote for then-40-year-old banking industry consultant, Omega Performance, which provides credit risk training to banks. Moody's Analytics now owns Omega Performance..) Image: Radission US on Unsplash

In this 2016 blog post, I showed senior banking leaders how banks can manage the regulatory environment while helping prevent future meltdowns by taking steps today to address rising credit risk. One critical way to confront credit risk is through investing in ongoing, robust credit risk training for bankers. While some banks are cutting back on this training, this blog post showed why it’s not advisable as both regulation and risk grow. (**This is a blog post I pitched, researched, and wrote for then-40-year-old banking industry consultant, Omega Performance, which provides credit risk training to banks. Moody's Analytics now owns Omega Performance.) Image: Robb Miller on Unsplash

The last decade in the banking industry has been challenging. The US economy has rebounded, however, and consumers are getting more products and services from banks. Banks remain overwhelmed by the aftershocks of the economic meltdown. Post-crisis, many financial institutions still are working through costly legal outcomes related to poorly structured lending policies and the resulting wave of federal regulation enacted to prevent future financial collapses. Banks are facing increased costs both for complying with and violating new credit regulations designed to protect consumers. But credit risk training can reduce those costs, while increasing customer trust, and this 2016 blog post showed banking leaders how. (**This is a blog post I pitched, researched, and wrote for then-40-year-old banking industry consultant, Omega Performance, which provides credit risk training to banks. Moody's Analytics now owns Omega Performance.) Image: Edmond Dantes on Pexels

Determined to increase sales and market share, banks continue to focus on external communications. They develop marketing and corporate communications strategies designed to reach target audiences and convert them to bank customers. Undoubtedly, developing strong external communications programs to reach audiences continues to be critical to bank revenue growth. However, recent events in the lending community that led to significant losses show that attention to internal communications is crucial. That helps maintain information sharing across the organization at all levels and reduces risk of losses to a bank because of mistakes, failure to understand and apply regulations, or fraud. In this 2016 blog post, I showed bank leaders why internal communications are essential for preventing losses from making risky credit decisions. (**This is a blog post I pitched, researched, and wrote for then-40-year-old banking industry consultant, Omega Performance, which provides credit risk training to banks. Moody's Analytics now owns Omega Performance.) Image: Kampus Production on Pexels

Senior executives in the banking industry are retiring, and banks are hard-pressed to replace them. Intensifying the problem is the fact that during the Great Recession, financial institutions hired fewer bankers in their mid-30s and 40s. Artificial intelligence (AI) has eliminated some banking tasks in recent years, causing bank hiring managers to believe that they could hire fewer professionals to address credit risk. However, human-driven credit risk is more sophisticated than the AI technology designed to find and mitigate it, so banks must hire employees specializing in credit risk and train them to do effectively do what AI can't. Training is a primary method for retaining the newest generation of credit risk professionals, too. This 2016 blog post provided insights to bank leaders about its importance. (**This is a blog post I pitched, researched, and wrote for then-40-year-old banking industry consultant, Omega Performance, which provides credit risk training to banks. Moody's Analytics now owns Omega Performance.) Image: Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Pexels

When Tim Mulligan became chief HR officer at the world-famous San Diego Zoo in 2004, the workforce was tired, stressed, distracted and disconnected. That was bad for them, the customers and the bottom line, so Mulligan immediately began focusing on shifting the organization’s culture. He has helped remake the zoo into a place where its workers are more focused, healthy and engaged. Today, as the zoo celebrates its 100th anniversary, it does so in an award-winning environment that’s more profitab