How Workplace Culture Drives Team Engagement, Member Satisfaction and Business Results

When you think about previous places where you have worked throughout your career, what factors ultimately contributed to you choosing to pack up and leave that position? Was it a tough decision to make, or were you ready for a change? On the other hand, if you have continued to thrive in the same organization for the majority of your tenure, what elements have encouraged you to stay?

More than likely, the culture within your workplace played a pivotal role in your pro-con list when you were considering these potentially life-changing choices.

Workplace culture can have a significant impact on every facet of operations in your credit union. Whether it’s employee retention, member approval and even your business’ bottom line, the importance of supporting your team is important now more than ever. If you want to explore more of the ways that company culture can have an extraordinary impact, keep reading!

Winning Awards and Continuing the Culture Conversation

For the third consecutive year, Vizo Financial has received the Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award. This recognition is a high honor, as this is a global award for which only a handful of companies qualify, and even fewer companies win. Included in these high standards are not only the results of the employee engagement survey, but also each company’s member satisfaction survey scores and their overall financial results. Winning this award reinforces the well-researched point that committed employees enhance the member experience, which in turn leads to strong financial performance.

In a recent episode of our Financial Minds: Meet the Experts podcast, I spoke with host Jaime Agostino, VP, sales, marketing and education at Vizo Financial, about the reasons why I think Vizo Financial continues to succeed in creating a positive, engaging workplace culture worthy of this award. A few key focus points I shared during the episode include:

• Making company decisions with a focus on the best interests of team members.
• Developing an established department dedicated to culture.
• Ensuring continued manager engagement and meeting the needs of employees.

If you have not already, I highly encourage you to listen to the full episode. After tuning in, I hope you will find helpful resources that you can reference and share with your team.

Strategies for Success

How can you put these ideas I’ve mentioned into practice? During the episode, I also highlighted the top strategies that you can use to further develop a robust company culture, which are:

• Using your Core Values as anchor points for behavior across the organization
• Identifying and leveraging each individual’s strengths using the CliftonStrengths Assessment
• Working consistently with managers and leaders to focus on methods that inspire each team member’s best work

With these areas in mind, it is important to set goals for your institution as you work on your team’s culture. In turn, the results will speak for themselves. The 2025 Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award winner announcement highlighted that award-winning organizations “elevated the employee experience while strengthening business outcomes, demonstrating that investing in people fuels long-term success.”

What Motivates Us to Continue to Improve our Culture

While we are extremely proud of this honor, we are more gratified about what the award tells us – that by and large our employees enjoy coming to work every day. Life isn’t always easy, and it can be made infinitely more difficult when a person dislikes their job. As an organization, we strive to have a positive impact on our employees so they can have a positive impact on our members.

Our goal at the Corporate is to change the conversation at the dinner table when the topic of work comes up. When that discussion starts far too often it can bring down everyone’s mood as complaints, criticisms, and unhappiness dominate.

We like to think our employees raise everyone’s mood by describing their workday with gratitude, optimism, and compliments. It’s rare that employees constantly brag about their employer, but at the Corporate that’s our ultimate goal. It’s important to remember that all good things, in every organization, stem from the will and skill of their employees.

Joe Bertotto has more than three decades of experience helping leaders improve their workplace cultures. He is the SVP/chief culture officer at Vizo Financial Corporate Credit Union and a Gallup Certified Strengths Coach. In 2014, Joe was named a Credit Union Rock Star by Credit Union Magazine. He also recently published his book, Pick Up the Gum Wrapper: How To Create a Workplace That Increases Performance While Improving Lives, which credit union leaders have been using as a guide to increase the effectiveness of their leadership skills and overall culture.