Case 1.1: Vancity

Vancity, a Vancouver-based co-operative which is now Canada’s largest credit union was founded in 1946 and began with only $22 in total assets. Vancity is an excellent example of a company that is committed to creating a healthy and committed workforce. As stated in the article the co-operative creates an optimum working environment by allowing “Employees (to) enjoy business casual dress, listen to music while they work, participate on Vancity sports teams, and attend a host of social events… If an employee has a young child, it may be necessary to build a workday that allows for flexibility. This positive approach recognizes the challenges of balancing work and life commitments and empowers employees to create the right environment to thrive at both.” Vancity has a vision to achieve positive change and has succeeded though a number of programs. The article lists a few of their achievements such as;
Giving back a portion of their profits to members and communities
Offering bank services to the less fortunate
Training their employees financial literary skills
Being a strong supporter of women in the workplace
After receiving disappointing results from its first employee survey Vancity held focus groups of 120 employees. The co-operative later vowed to increase investment training and development, renew the organizations infrastructure and provide employees with growth opportunity by focusing on new areas in hopes to re-engage their employees. Vancity uses teamwork as a tool to give all members of their staff a voice. An example of this would be managers and employees working side-by-side to improve performance as a whole as well as the company performing surveys to better understand what kind of support employees need in order to work as efficiently as possible. The four functions of management are planning, organizing, leading and controlling. In my opinion Vancity excels at leading because a leader to me is someone who know when to step up and take control as well as when to step back and let things play out. Throughout this article Vancity has proven to be able to do both these things, an example of them stepping up is noticing a problem with the less fortunate and making their services available to them. An example of the co-operative stepping back is instead of deciding for themselves what needed to be done when employees became unhappy they issued a survey and allowed the employees to decided what needed to be done.