Employee Engagement and Building Trust with Independent Community Bankers of America’s Valerie Utsey

Better People Podcast

This episode, the Independent Community Bankers of America’s Chief Human Resources Officer Valerie Utsey talks about the different aspects that impact employee engagement, the ways to build trust in an organization, and how to onboard staff in a virtual environment.

Valerie Utsey has worked in HR for over two decades and is currently the Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer for the Independent Community Bankers of America.

Valerie has extensive experience in developing People and Culture programs for emerging small to midsize organizations and has a proven ability to transform Human Resources departments to align with the business strategy and goals. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Better People Podcast:

• The different aspects of HR.
• The process of implementing new HR processes.
• How Covid has changed company cultures.
• How to use technology in performance review systems.
• The role that compensation has in employee engagement.
• Different aspects that impact employee engagement.
• Ways to build trust in an organization.
• How to build relationships with your colleagues.
• How to onboard staff in a virtual environment.

Resources:

• The Independent Community Bankers of America
• MidAtlantic Employers’ Association (MEA)

Connect with Valerie Utsey:

• LinkedIn

Connecting with the host:

• Holly DePalma on LinkedIn

Quotables:

• 32:12 - “We send out a care package to their home with a note from our CEO welcoming them to ICBA, we use our manager portal that has a template for managers to use to also send an email to that person welcoming them to their department.”
• 36:34 - “In HR we’re hit with so many different employee relations issues, I think we tend to get numb kind of like doctors they see so many bad things so often they tend to get numb by it, and when we get numb we tend to lose some of that humanity and being able to help manage the process and it’s super important not to lose that grace, you never know what someone is going through outside of work that caused the actions or reactions of an individual.”
• 2:04 - “To be a great human resources practitioner learn all the aspects of HR you can at a later time focus on one area but learn all the aspects.”
• 5:31 - “We don’t have required days that you need to be in the office or required number of days we are doing presence for a purpose and that creates a whole new level of what employee engagement means and that presence for a purpose is both at the organizational level as we celebrate and recognize certain things that we want staff to come in for or at the department level so training managers on how to create those purposeful conversations or meetings with their staff to create that in-person environment and ensure that our culture remains.”
• 10:04 - “The opportunity to coach and grow and develop and keep on track and help achieve the business goals it’s not once a year.”