VANCITY

Vancity’s Competitive Advantages Satisfied and Committed Workforce – Vancity has emphasized on the fact that a committed workforce can lead to financial success in the industry as well as efficient productivity. Vancity provides various staff benefits such as business casual dressing, flexible working hours, hosting various social events to keep up the morale at the workplace and various employee benefit services. Unique Approach – Vancity was the first Canadian financial institution to provide mortgages to women, and marketed via traditional methods to the gay and lesbian community. Apart from that Vancity was the first North American firm to acquire R1 rating from Dominion Bond Rating Service and also provided their own socially responsible mutual funds. Decision Making – The CEO of Vancity, Tamara Vrooman, admitted that they use a locally based decision making for the success of their firm and that was what differentiates them from the big financial institutions.

Stakeholder’s Satisfaction As Vancity is a member owned credit union, its shareholders are primarily its employees, members and the communities that are linked to the credit union. Members: Founded in 1946, Vancity started with $22 in total assets and started lending money to the bank-rejects with a purpose to help the people and communities associated with them to prosper. With the introducing the direct marketing strategy to the gay and lesbian community, providing mortgage services to women, Vancity has been inventing innovative ideas to keep their member happy and satisfied. Employees: One of the biggest factors to the employee satisfaction at Vancity is that the employees can set corporate policies so that it is easy for them to balance their personal and corporate life. Telecommuting, compressed working hours or brief work weeks are some of the alternative work options that Vancity provides its employees with. Apart from that Vancity provides its employees with benefits such as life and dental insurance; maternity leaves; 4-6 week vacations; profit sharing and many other benefits. Communities: Initiating the Shared Success Program where Vancity donates a portion of its net profits as various funding initiatives or community grants. They have also initiated other programs such as Each one, Teach one, where employees teach the newcomers to Canada about basic financial skills; the Pigeon Park Savings program helps the poor by providing them the banking services.

Management Functions Although Vancity is doing a nice job in managing the four functions, but it is handling the leading, planning and controlling in a much better way. When it comes to leading, Vancity allows its employees to set up corporate policies to balance their professional and personal lives. Apart from that, flexible hours, short work schedules, telecommuting, annual 4-6 week vacations so that the employees don’t burn themselves out. Talking about Planning and Controlling, the firm conducts the annual co-operative survey where they target the employee engagement. For some years the results didn’t met the minimum of 75% where the employees felt that the organization’s goals and their personal goals weren’t aligned; managers weren’t supportive and the infrastructure limited their efficiency. To tackle these issues, the company started investing in development and training as well as improving the workplace in terms of the IT infrastructure and enabling the employees to progress more in the firm which returned much better results in the surveys.