Culture isn't a cost, it's the engine of customer success.

Welcome to the Built by People podcast, where we share the stories and insights of the world's top HR leaders. Join us as we dive deep into the minds of HR executives, uncovering their strategies, challenges, and triumphs in shaping today's workforce. I'm excited to welcome Lisa to the Built By People podcast. Lisa, thank you so much for joining us. And as a starting question, I always love to ask if you can share a little bit more about your career journey.

Absolutely. Thank you so much. It's interesting to know how fast your life can go by and your journey and your career. I started out early on. I had the opportunity late '90s to get into IT recruiting, and that really found my love into human resources, understanding businesses and people. It was such an interesting time in that moment, late '90s, early 2000s, when so many different industries were realizing we need to focus on people if we want to actually perform in our business. I was truly blessed to come into an opportunity where people saw me at a very young age having that drive, having that vision, and very early on at the age of 24 was given the opportunity to lead in the human resources space, which was even today at my age now, I still think about those moments of appreciation and gratitude for those individuals that saw that in me.

Lisa, over a decade ago, COCC made a pivotal decision to invest heavily in workplace culture.

Yes.

What catalyzed this decision and how did you approach transforming your workplace into one of Connecticut's best places to work?

That's, that's great. It's a great question. We talk about it a lot in making sure that we don't forget the fundamentals of what makes our business tick and what makes our business successful. So I joined COCC about 20 years ago, and we were at a time, I'd say a beautiful time, though we tell a lot of our new hires. This is a beautiful time now. When I think about it, we were in a recent transition of our CEO, who's still in the role today, had recently taken over. It became pretty obvious to him in the first couple of years that we needed to do something different with how we were handling the people in our organization. So when you think about even 15 years ago, back in 2010, it was that moment of we need to be continuing to do more. We need to figure out how we're going to grow this business. And it became very obvious to us that we needed to put a lot more fire into how we handle people. The benefit that I've really carried through my journey here is that we have built this business through people. We truly have. I have a slide that sometimes I'll share in some of our presentations back to our client base where we go back and we look at our client report cards, our customer report cards, which is a huge— one of our huge staples of making sure that we're performing well as an organization. Looking at our turnover, looking at our current employee engagement levels. And when we started to invest in people, there was a direct correlation of the turnover going down, the employee engagement going up, and our report card ratings, which is a huge component of our success, going to a higher level than we ever had. And to this day, those three metrics are things that we are constantly looking at because there's such a direct correlation in our business.

Lisa, as a financial technology provider managing over 7 million accounts across 200+ banks and credit unions, how does your focus on workplace culture directly impact your ability to serve these institutions effectively?

Well, it does keep me up at night, I'm not going to lie. We are in a very high— our business is extremely highly complex. So it's— yes, it's regulated. We're constantly standing up new products or supporting new products for our banks and credit unions. But if we took our eye off the ball on making sure that, number one, we're developing talent, number two, we're onboarding as effectively— I would say quickly and effectively— as possible, those things matter right back to the bank and credit union. So if we're not thinking about how we're onboarding, if we're not thinking about how we're growing the staff, we look dated pretty quickly. That's the expectation that our smaller banks and credit unions or the size of banks and credit unions that are in our wheelhouse, they kind of expect us to be thinking ahead. They expect us to be having talent within all facets of our business to be ready to help them. So there's really no— we don't have that pass that you can give by saying, hey, I'm new, I'm not sure. That would be like the worst thing to say. It's just making sure that we're ready and that we have the right talent around every single department.

Lisa, in your role overseeing HR for a technology company that enables smaller financial institutions to compete with larger banks, how do you ensure your talent strategy aligns with both your technical needs and your service-oriented mission?

It is such a delicate balance. And so what's interesting, if I was to show you kind of how we're organized, we have service folks and we have client-facing folks. In every single group. So we have a big part of our technical teams that are out servicing our customers. So yes, we have your typical support of the product, support of the software, support of the service, but then we also have a technology arm that's actually supporting the datacom lines that are running through banks, looking at their network security from a cyber perspective. We do a ton of support around making sure that our institutions are protected as best they can. And so service is kind of at every moment. There's not a place in our business where you're immune to it. Even our report cards, we have about 720 employees. When we get a report card from one individual at a bank, I think it's sent to 330 people. So that's how much and how serious it is here within COCC.

Lisa, you've mentioned in the past that you can find technology anywhere. But it's how it actually goes together that makes the difference.

So I do think it's having almost every employee understanding the value of us gaining a customer, keeping a customer. Many times these decisions, when a bank or a credit union will join the CoC, it can take anywhere between 6 to 12 months in the review. And typically the cycle for our conversion can run anywhere between 9, 12 months to 3 years. These are big systems, big moves. The bank and credit union take these decisions really seriously. This is not a one-week decision. Usually there's external consultants involved. And every time that we start, you get the conversation, you get the phone call because of the technology, but you land the deal because those institutions learn about who we are and learn about the people. And it's the people that sells. And it's the people that wins. And so going back to how do we make sure that our employees here understand that, we spend a lot of time from the early phase of onboarding through our communications, through our town hall meetings, talking about the importance of our clients, making sure that we're doing right. Sometimes it's a challenge. I will be honest with you, even in our most recent employee survey, we have employees that get really frustrated that we find ways to say yes when they want to say no. It is that component of making sure that everybody truly understands it. We are not— our business is not run by by where our benchmarks are with EBITDA. We are very much run on are we doing right for the clients. We're cooperatively owned, so are we doing right by them? Are we thinking ahead? Are we looking at the right technology? Are we looking at the right products for them? So much does go back to resting on our growth. We have to grow to continue to invest in the technology. So it is growth, but it's manageable growth, making sure that our clients, our current clients, still see us as a trusted partner and still sees us as someone that they can go to for pretty much any need that they have.

Lisa, as COCC prepares for a rebranding, how are you approaching the challenge of maintaining your strong workforce culture while evolving the organization's identity?

So it's interesting. We are exploring the concepts of potentially a name change, and it's not It's because many times people are like, who would COCC stand for? And we say, well, it actually means Connecticut Online Computer Center. And the term seems very dated. It kind of reminds me of when we were on mainframe shop, but we've had this great brand, both granted our footprint for our workforce now is national. We have employees spread out over 25 different states, but the majority here in Connecticut. But we have a brand and awareness of who COCC is. We're a small state. We've won so many awards, so people just naturally know us and our clients know us by COCC. But we also know that there's— we get confused by Central Oregon Community College because they're also COCC. But the challenge that we have in it, and this is kind of why we're exploring it right now, is we don't want to do something where we lose who we are. This is not a rebrand because we're putting a new product in or we need to refresh and we need to kind of out with the old, in with the new. Things are going well. It's just that element of making sure that we have a name that really fits us for now and the future. So it's going to be interesting to see how it goes. I think we'll be laser-focused on communicating those points to make sure that people know this is not us missing something. This is not us needing to do better. This is us really making sure that we are set for the future and that we're paying attention to both sides to our client base. The growth potentially in the market in our workforce.

Lisa, any parting advice you'd like to share with our audience?

It's interesting, and I love— I will be honest, I've listened to a few of your recent podcasts, and I love the fact that every time you have someone in the seat and you're having a conversation, we could come from different industries, come from different size employers, but we all have this little internal flame in us to keep going and Sometimes I'll say to myself, if I wasn't in this seat, who would want it? And sometimes it's a way of keeping the motivation. But I do think, especially with automation, with AI, with the growth of all industries, with the war for talent that I don't see changing anytime soon in our country, I think folks in our seats on the HR leadership side have to constantly be thinking ahead. It's— no one's going to come to us. There's never been anyone in my tenure that's knocked on my door and said, hey, tell me about your people strategy and what you're going to do next year. It'd be like a foreign question that someone would ask me, but it's my responsibility to make sure that we have it. It's my responsibility to make sure that we're thinking ahead in the future of what our business needs. I think no matter what industry I was in, it would be true to know that you've got to be thinking ahead for your business. You've got to understand your business. You have to take care of yourself, so you can't lose sight of that. But it's important that you're really thinking ahead for the company.

Lisa, thank you so much for joining us on the Built by People podcast. It was great to have you involved.

I appreciate the invite, and thank you again.