Investing in employee learning.
Workers Credit Union trains highly skilled employees to deliver quality, immersive member services.
93%
Post-course assessment scores for more confident, highly skilled employees.
Objectives
Create culture of learning among employees at all career stages
Ensure employees are confident and knowledgeable when advising customers
Reduce time and manual labor of tracking employee course completions and assessments
Evolve employee technical skills while providing a foundation in leadership
Results
Completed 2,100+ learning hours in less than 3 years
Confirmed 95% of employees understand their training
Secured 89% completion rate for top 10 assigned courses; average score of 90% on follow-up retention exams
Provided 9,000+ courses with custom and out-of-the-box content in one location
For over 100 years, the Workers Credit Union (WCU) has existed to serve its members and communities across Massachusetts. WCU wants to be more than a credit union, but a partner in its members’ long-term financial wellness.
To improve financial literacy among its surrounding communities, WCU has made member education a core initiative. WCU developed the Workers WayTM, a proprietary approach to helping members take control of their future and achieve their goals at every life stage through personalized one-on-one financial coaching. All member-facing staff are trained and certified financial coaches who meet with members individually to listen without judging, to answer questions around budgeting, saving, and investing, and to provide the tools and support that empower people to make good decisions, no matter what stage of life they may be in.
Giving those frontline teams deep knowledge about the most effective services for each customer inspired WCU to make special investments in employee learning. Traditionally, employee training in the finance industry emphasizes compliance, but the WCU Learning and Development (L&D) team saw an opportunity to sharpen team members’ financial skills and deepen their understanding of industry trends.
Becoming innovators in employee learning
When Nicole Vassallo, Vice President of Learning and Development, Chief Learning Officer and Julie McNamara, Virtual Learning Developer joined WCU, they set to work expanding learning material. As they led a lean internal L&D team, the pair were confronted by limitations in delivering this new material to hundreds of WCU employees. Creating and uploading Go To Meeting videos and PowerPoint slides in different locations online was time and labor-consuming, and finding content proved challenging to employees.
Looking for a centralized online platform to support material and track employees’ success, the team discovered Adobe Learning Manager, a learning management system (LMS). Though using an LMS was incredibly rare among credit unions at the time, WCU sensed that becoming an early adopter of the technology could pave the way for the industry to promote deeper employee upskilling. WCU chose the Adobe LMS for its superior tracking and content creation capabilities, while making it easier for employees to use – encouraging a broader culture of learning to take root within the organization.
“To empower our employees with the skills to be good financial stewards for our members, we needed a sophisticated, versatile learning management system that could be a single source for all learning content,” explains Vassallo. “Adobe Learning Manager helps us deliver a diverse range of content and streamlines the process of tracking learner success, while growing with us as we continue to build and evolve our approach to employee learning.”
“Through the breadth and depth of material we can share with Adobe Learning Manager, we’re training employees who make our members feel secure in trusting us with their financial futures.”
Nicole Vassallo
Vice President of Learning and Development, Workers Credit Union
Creating employee learning pathways to deliver skilled services
With a new centralized LMS in place, learning pathways were created to guide employees at multiple stages of their careers.
Employees start with learning modules focused on the history and culture of WCU, along with key policies and procedures. Once they’ve made their way to the end of the new hire pathway, employees dig into more customized training based on their role within the organization.
Each skills-specific pathway begins with an assessment that helps employees and their managers gauge their baseline level of knowledge about that subject. Employees can access all assigned material that covers job-relevant topics like opening an account, applying for a home loan, or understanding the components of a mortgage, in one easy-to-find, easy-to-use location.
“The accessibility of the learning platform motivates our employees to be self-directed learners who are highly knowledgeable and passionate about services that boost the financial health and quality of life of our members,” says McNamara. “Our employees don’t hesitate to find and use our training content, fostering a real culture of learning across WCU that differentiates us from other credit unions. Learners have completed more than 2,100 learning hours in less than three years.”
As an employee evolves in their current role or moves into a new one, they can enter new learning pathways that reflect their most updated skill needs, whether they must become mortgage experts or parse out the differences between an auto loan and lease. When new industry trends and standards emerge, it’s easy to update training content or curate out-of-the-box materials in the LMS to re-skill employees.
To fully enrich learning pathways, the L&D team develops their own content in Adobe Captivate and uses Adobe Creative Cloud apps, such as Premiere Pro and Audition, to create interactive videos that provide ‘hands-on’ training. The team also takes advantage of integrations with the Adobe LMS and other online learning systems, including LinkedIn Learning, to augment internally developed courses with other dynamic content.
WCU now offers more than 9,000 courses in one central location, allowing employees to find the material they need – even if it comes from multiple sources – right at their fingertips.
“Adobe Learning Manager makes sharing material so efficient that we can give 100% of employees access, with an 89% completion rate for our top 10 assigned courses,” says Vassallo. “Through the breadth and depth of material we can share, we’re training employees who make our members feel secure in trusting us with their financial futures.”
“As we get deeper insight into how our employees retain knowledge, we’re creating content that contributes to a high average post-course assessment score of 93%, with subsequent retention scores averaging 90%.”
Julie McNamara
Virtual Learning Developer, Workers Credit Union
Using assessments to build knowledge and confidence
WCU’s goal is for every employee to complete their learning pathways with full confidence in their own knowledge and abilities, making assessments a vital part of WCU employee training.
After an employee has finished their initial new hire assessment, the results are shared with that employee’s manager. The idea is to give each manager a holistic view of that employee’s strengths and areas where they could benefit from specific learning content.
When employees wrap up assigned material, they receive a follow-up assessment that they must pass with at least an 80% score. Within 60 days of completing a course, employees participate in an additional assessment that gauges how well they’ve retained their learning. Through automated tracking, the L&D team sees employee scores and get a bird’s eye view into broader trends among learners.
“The automated tracking in Adobe Learning Manager ensures faster, smoother workflows that give us the time and flexibility to design more responsive training content. We’ve increased our knowledge retention rates, with an 11-point jump in scores between initial confidence checks and our follow-up assessments,” says McNamara. “As we get deeper insight into how our employees retain knowledge, we’re creating content that contributes to a high average post-course assessment score of 93%, with subsequent retention scores averaging 90%.”
Consistently delivering more effective training
High assessment scores indicate that employees are fully engaged with their training. Learners say that accessing the LMS on a mobile app enables them to dedicate time to their coursework, even when they’re on the go. The flexibility of learning over the app at their convenience allows employees to dedicate more time to members during working hours.
“Our employees have great praise for using Adobe Learning Manager, with roughly 95% of surveyed learners saying that they feel they understand training delivered,” says Vassallo.
With a centralized digital LMS, employees are also assured of consistency in their training – modules that might have been delivered in-person can be easily moved online to accommodate unforeseen issues, like inclement weather.
Growing a learning community of future leaders
The L&D team is continually innovating the training that enables employees to better serve members one-on-one, and to lead community outreach like consulting with high school students about financial literacy. Exploring the full potential of the Adobe LMS remains key to their success, and the team is already planning to add courses around urgent issues in finance, such as IT security, phishing, and fraud.
“By making Adobe Learning Manager a foundation of our employee learning and training, we’ve transformed our employees into expert guides and resources for our members as they plan for long-term financial security,” says McNamara. “With the learning our employees grow and share, each consultation becomes a stepping stone for members to build stronger, more prosperous communities.”
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