Job Attitudes within U.S. Bank
By
Cristian Ramirez Cuevas, Zakk Kiley, Carson Hensleigh, and Cris Velasquez Lemus
Introduction:
The topic we will be introducing in this paper is job attitudes within U.S. Bank. Specifically, the level of job satisfaction and examining what causes negative or positive attitudes. We will be focusing on ‘person-environment’ fit, relationships at work, stress, and job characteristics. We feel these are the most important aspects when examining job attitudes. The outline of this paper will begin with information about U.S Bank, this will include fundamental information about the company and how we collected data on it. We will then follow up with our interviewees answers in the findings section, where we will describe what we learned as a result of the interview. We will also converse on what the company is and is not doing to improve job attitudes. The following section will be our recommendations based on the findings, where we will go into detail on problems we observed and areas where improvement is needed. Finally, we will state our conclusion, and include both our reference list, and an appendix. What we hope will come from this analysis are ways that U.S bank can improve attitudes within its corporation thus improving other aspects of business.
Company Information:
U.S. Bank is a financial institution that focuses on building trust relationships with their employees, customers and shareholders. They offer various financial products and services that create financial opportunities in a simple and convenient matter. Their overall mission statement is “We draw strength from diversity and do the right thing by putting people first in order to power human potential.” U.S Bank is the 5th largest commercial bank across the United States. The company began as the First National Bank of Cincinnati in 1863 until multiple mergers occurred, which led to the development of U.S. Bank. Currently U.S. Bank’s headquarters is located in Minneapolis and offers service across the United States (IBIS World). As of 2016, there are 3,100 branches and 4,800 ATMs. Regardless of its large availability to consumers, U.S. Bank is known as the largest employer and largest total assets holder in the industry do to its current 71,000 full time employees (IBIS World).
Findings:
Job attitudes can be defined as how individuals feel about being at work. Studying job attitudes helps us to determine employee satisfaction in the workplace. According to “Organizational Behavior” attitude refers to our “opinions, beliefs, and feelings about aspects of our environment.” In the case of U.S. Bank, we have asked three U.S. Bank employees a few questions to determine if they were happy to be working there and assessed their job attitudes. We asked them to be completely honest and focused our questions on person-environment fit, relationships at work, stress, and job characteristics.
Person-Environment Fit:
The consensus among U.S. Bank employees concerning their fit within the company appeared to be encouraging. Many employees reported that they plan to stay with the company indefinitely, with no plans in the future to leave. They reported that the only way that they would leave for another company is if there were opportunities for promotions at other companies, a major personal life-event, a major move, or if the company environment were to change drastically. Employees enjoy that they matter in the grand scheme of the business and are often presented with scenarios where they are given the opportunity to make decisions that impact the customers directly. Finally, the manager of this branch feels that his employees care about doing their jobs to the best of their abilities just as he does in his own role in the company. The other employees agreed that they were a team, “striving for a common goal and looking out for each other so that everyone can succeed”.
Relationships at Work:
Employees at this branch share a close relationship with one another. The branch manager shared that he, “admits to his team all the time when [he] makes a mistake.” This creates a sense of openness and honesty in the workplace. The two employees of this manager say that his honesty allows them to be direct when faced with confronting their own mistakes. When faced with a challenge that is beyond the scope of their capabilities, employees will seek explanation or demonstration so that they are prepared to complete the tasks themselves later. This initiative shows that U.S. Bank employees have a high-level of flow.
Stress:
Stress in any work environment can be detrimental to business. This is especially true in the banking industry, as exemplified by the Wells Fargo scandal that took place last year. The manager disliked “having the full responsibility of the team, location, and the customers, but not having the required ‘power’ to run things the way [he felt] is needed.” Stress becomes a factor when employees are tasked with having to follow corporate policy but when the policies in action flounder, they are left to handle the aftermath without corporate physically there for support. Often employees are faced with difficult decisions where they want to give up. These situations arise when employees are unable to help customers resolve their issues or second-guess their own work, for management this occurs when employees lose all engagement, or fail to perform. On days where more than one employee fails to hit a goal or shows that they do not care about goals and commitments being missed, the manager reported that it feels, “devastating and draining.”
Job Characteristics:
While every job is different, U.S. bank employees seem to agree that there is a possibility of growth and development for them within the company. This and other job characteristics are the reasons why employees are choosing to stay. All employees noted that they feel working for U.S. Bank has offered them a stable career with room for advancement from within. Lower-level employees noted that they seek to “positively impact as many people as possible.” This level of commitment to the business and its customers is reassuring, as employees who feel as though they are making a difference will remain devoted to the company. While stability exists within the company, employees also offered that they felt as though there was “inadequate training for those wanting to move into management roles.” While others, “didn’t expect to work weekends and holidays.” This leaves room for improvement for U.S. Bank to change their training systems to better accommodate employees seeking promotion, and offer new hires full disclosure of needed availability.
Recommendation:
Based on our literature review we see U.S Bank doing some great things for their employees. We also believe they can improve on a few areas to improve job attitudes within the corporation. To start we will discuss a few things that they should keep doing. The first being to continue with the unexpected and expected bonuses. Theses bonuses are huge in maintaining and improving positive job attitudes within the corporation. These not only provide a boost in job satisfaction but as well as overall moral as some bonuses come unexpectedly. Not to mention everyone enjoys extra money in their pocket.
Another great thing U.S Bank is doing that improves and maintains a positive job attitude is they treat employees fairly and ensure happiness. Two of the employees we talked to mentioned being treated with respect as a reason they liked working for U.S Bank. One thing U.S Bank does to ensure happiness is they offer a 401k retirement package. This shows that they want employees long term. In return this takes away certain stresses of saving for retirement that many people worry about. Anything that takes away a little bit of stress is always a positive in the work environment and improves job attitudes.
The first area of improvement for U.S Bank is to set more achievable goals. Multiple employees stated that they have unreasonable selling goals and see other employees unmotivated to reach those goals. They are asked to sell credit cards, open accounts and loan applications but remain ethical at the same time as they can be terminated for forcing a unneeded product on a customer. This affects the employees immensely specifically with job attitudes. These goals cause stress which in return affect the whole operation. If an employee is worried about being terminated or reprimanded by management because they cant reach a goal then they cannot put their 100 percent focus on achieving those goals. The unreachable goals of selling need to be adjusted so employees don't have to worry as much about the negatives not not selling. According to S Zuhair Naqvi, a Gulf Times newspaper editor, “Evidence has shown that one of the most effective ways to accomplish any goal is to develop a series of micro-goals. No matter how big your dreams are, you can break them down into bite size, manageable chunks by simply asking yourself, "What can I do today/this week/this month to move me closer to my goal?" Instead of having ridiculous goals set a reasonable goals for all the services that U.S bank can offer. Knowing that not everyone who walks in the front door does not need a credit card or a new checking account. So why not start by having at least one for the first two hours and try to double it as your shift goes on. By the end of the day, knowing that those small goals that were accomplished will add confidence and better results. Employees getting down on themselves because of lack of sales can have a snowball effect on everything else going on at work and that really hurts job attitudes within the corporation. We would suggest backing off on harping the employees on sales and focus more on customers needs and satisfaction as well as making more realistic goals with small goals. The sales will come with satisfied customers when employees have the customers best financial interest in mind.
The second area of improvement would be to improve training. During the interview we found that an employee that moved into a management position felt under trained and wasn't fully ready for all the tasks at hand once in management. They stated that they were handed the keys to a “40 million dollar portfolio” overnight and felt unprepared. The success or failure rests on their shoulders alone without extensive training to prepare them for the added responsibilities. We suggest changing and adding more training for each employee when they either start or change positions. This would involve on the job training as well. Once hired or a change in position at work the employee would be shadowed on the job by another employee. The person doing the shadowing or coaching would go through a coach class first designed by corporate so that they have a sense of what needs to be done. The time period that they are shadowed would vary based on how fast they pick it all up. This would ensure that an employee would feel fully capable of performing all the tasks within their job once on their own. In return the person who shadowed or the “on the job coach” would receive some sort of an incentive such as a bonus or time off award. This would encourage people to coach and thus improve training and overall job performance, satisfaction and ultimately job attitudes for all involved.
Conclusion:
From our research and experiences with U.S. Bank, we can conclude that they do a lot of things right for their employees. Through ours interviews, we learned more about satisfaction levels in person-environment fit, relationships at work, stress, and job characteristics. Overall their employees seemed to have a high level of job satisfaction due to the different programs U.S. bank has created. However, no company is perfect and we have included some recommendations that they could implement to increase overall levels of satisfaction among their branch level employees. We believe that if these recommendations are implemented, it would make U.S. Bank and even better place to work.