New year, same mess - Manager Vancity Employee Review

1.0
Jan 8, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Very loyal and understanding member, especially after the October system outage. Majority of employees who care deeply about their members. Last remaining company to still offer a defined benefit pension plan, with decent health coverage and adequate compensation.

Cons

Ive held off from writing this review for over a year now, but can't keep this bottled up any longer. I'm sure this will resonate with a lot my fellow employees, so here goes: Our CEO is a visionary, but delegates decisions to a senior leader whose strategic ideas are too theoretical and lack any consideration on how to actually implement them. Try reading any of the long-winded documents written by our Strategy team. We have stopped listening years ago. Aside from a small handful of people leaders, there is very little respect for any of the current leadership. Several of the branch management are promoted because of who you know and most leaders seem to be out of step with one another. In recent years, we've been operating out of fear of speaking out against the norm, especially at the quarterly manager's meetings. Some of these “high performing leaders” do it at the expense of others, and lead simply by their titles. They would have a hard time asking anyone to listen or help them without those titles. I am a people leader and am embarrassed at how poor our managers have become! All decision making is slow and painful, with most decisions bottled-necked at the senior leadership level, who then ultimately defer to the CEO. So, I'm unsure what my director and VP does. My assessment after 10 years here is that we simply lack focus and execution now. Just look at the long list of unfinished projects and ideas generated by innovation teams and network explorer groups. Hundreds of employees have spent countless hours on proposals, which have ultimately led nowhere. We have also created a handful of entitled teams that have special work/projects, but have absolutely no output to show for. Some of these teams were temporary and disband after a few months, others are still exist and have more than enough resources who are practically doing nothing. Finally, the updated banking system is simply inadequate. It now takes more time for my branch staff to complete a transaction with our members and I understand there is exponentially more admin work for our back office staff. There was no accountability for the teams who were responsible for the business requirements and designing the system. In fact, I know that most were even rewarded with new roles and even promotions. Let's not get started on the extra hours we had to put in during the October outage. Again, no accountability whatsoever.

Explore other reviews about Vancity

5.0
Jun 12, 2023
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Nice staff and training for early career

Cons

Non out of my minds

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Vancity Response
2y
Thanks for your review. At Vancity, we take pride in our friendly staff and the valuable learning and development opportunities we offer. Your feedback and kind words are much appreciated!
1.0
Aug 17, 2017
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

As others have said, Vancity employs some of the best people. Everyday you will go to work with some of the most engaged, motivated, and brilliant people in the financial sector. They care about their work, their impact, and their legacy. However, these people all eventually burn out and move on to other places where their values and worth are going to be rewarded, because Vancity just isn't that place.

Cons

Glassdoor reviews are indicative of how many people at Vancity feels. For over a year between 2016 to 2017 a slew of honest and heartfelt reviews flooded the site. These reviews were often brutal in their assessments, and probably took courage for the employees to write. However, in the past month or so, there are suddenly multiple 5-star reviews with little content or message. Here's what's wrong: Yes, we had a brutal launch of the new banking software. It was not well-planned, despite having close to a decade to do it. It cost a lot of money. We employed and fired a bunch of people. We promoted folks who in hindsight probably should've stayed as call centre agents or analysts. We spread ourselves thin across multiple markets that we have no experience in. Everyday we come up with new phrases or acronyms. Yes, all that happened. But now let's move on from that. Has much changed in the past couple of months? No. What you have is a company in search of a new identity. The market conditions are changing, and so are people's habits and needs in financial institutions. This means that results are not coming through, and staff continues to see restructures and packages. We also still employ a number of consultants who are billing top rates everyday for barely any work. I feel that people who speak the truth are getting frustrated that their words don't register. There are a ton of people who want Vancity to do better, to become engaged, but they're not getting the opportunity to do so for fear of retribution. That's wrong, isn't it?

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Vancity Response
8y
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Couldn't agree more with your suggestion to move on from the negativity, to focus on engagement of our staff who, by and large, want better things for Vancity. We have listened to the heartfelt feedback from our organization, and are committing to act upon it. I too hope we can listen to disenfranchised employees and motivate them to see ways out of the rut they feel that they are in. I truly believe there is much to motivate and excite people right now at Vancity, I think some of the 5 star reviewers you are a bit suspicious of, probably agree.
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