Colorado a battleground state for bank employees

The crowded banking environment in Northern Colorado has banks here competing for more than just customers. Employees – particularly workers with experience and a client list – are a valuable commodity for banks.
And bankers, even those who say they haven’t had trouble recruiting and retaining quality staffs, tend to have a plan.
Wages and benefits for banking employees in the region are up, managers are paying close attention to their bank’s internal climate, staffing levels are tight and bankers are looking for new hires from outside the region and even outside the industry.
Richard Fulkerson, commissioner of the Colorado State Division of Banking, said he’s heard consistently over the past decade that bankers face workforce shortages.
“It has been an ongoing challenge to hire and retain good employees, even with consolidation, even with some of the downturn in the economy,” he said. “That’s been a real challenge at all levels.”
As a result, Fulkerson said, bankers tend to be paying larger salaries and improving benefits and competing aggressively with each other for workers. Beefing up automated services also is helping bankers cope with the competitive market.
Numbers from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics illustrate the growth in banking employment. The number of loan officers employed in Colorado grew from 6,230 in 2002 to 7,010 in 2003. The number of tellers expanded during that period from 7,200 in 2002 to 7,830.
Salaries grew as well. The average annual salary for loan officers in 2002 was $64,230. By 2003 that number was $66,990. Tellers in Colorado earned an average annual salary of $22,090 in 2002 and $22,650 in 2003. The average annual salary for loan officers nationwide in 2003 was $55,590.
The competition for employees is particularly fierce at the upper management levels and for lending professionals.x09x09
Bankers are finding a shortage of good quality lenders, said Don Churchwell, president and CEO of Home State Bank. Home State has opted to look elsewhere for lenders, he said. “If they’ve got good credit skills, then we’ll help them understand the market in our Northern Colorado region.”
Competition among banks complicates the attraction-recruitment-retention effort for those upper level employees, Churchwell noted. “Any new bank that comes to the area, obviously what they’d like to have is to steal one of the lenders from another banking institution to bring a book of business with them.”
Jim Strovas, branch president of Adams Bank and Trust in Berthoud, said mergers have helped broaden the pool of prospective bank employees. Strovas said he hadn’t had any turnover at his Berthoud branch and had little trouble finding qualified employees.
“The continuing consolidation of the banking industry always puts some people out there looking because they’re concerned about their careers with megabanks – about losing their ability to really service their customers,” Strovas said. “There are a tremendous number of well-qualified individuals in the banking industry.”
At Adams, an internal training program based out of the bank’s headquarters in Ogallala, Neb., helps ensure a supply of skilled entry level workers.
Bankers are paying close attention to employee compensation in terms of wages and benefits. In addition, internal climate has become increasingly important.
At New Frontier Bank in Greeley, Joe Tennessen has recently taken on a new title: senior vice president of cultural enhancement. Tennessen said the bank’s president and CEO, Larry Seastrom, recognized the challenges a bank faces in continuing quality teamwork and customer service as it grows.
“He asked me, about a year ago, to spend time working with employees to make certain they are happy with their work situation and try to resolve problems.”
New Frontier Bank has had a first-hand look at the challenges of hiring and retaining employees over the six years since it was first launched. The bank opened six years ago with a staff of seven and assets of $6 million. Today it has branch locations in Greeley and Windsor, 93 employees and assets of $475 million.
The bank attributes that growth in part to its culture of teamwork and customer service, Tennessen said. By tending to communication, the New Frontier Bank aims to keep its employees actively engaged in its growth and operations.
“The key, really, is to maintain really good communications with the people you work with,” Tennessen said. “If you can do that, people will ordinarily tell you if they feel something can be done better or there is some way we can improve.”
Growth can present obstacles to communication. More employees mean more different personalities; new facilities means people are spread further from each other. So New Frontier is beefing up its efforts to keep employees in close touch with each other.
“We do social things and we will enlarge that activity so that we have the opportunity to spend some social time with each other.”
Finding the right people to staff the bank hasn’t been a big challenge for New Frontier, perhaps because it tends to take a proactive approach to hiring, Tennessen said. When the bank’s leadership sees that well-qualified workers are available, they may hire before a position opens or exists. In one case recently, Tennessen noted, a new employee started work even before her desk arrived.
The bank also tends to look outside established banking circles for employees. “One of our lenders who does a lot of our agricultural lending ran a farmers’ elevator,” Tennessen noted. “He knew all the farmers and he knew their financial needs, so he was taught to be a banker.”

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