Preparing for Seamless Integration and Consistency

Two regionally based Canadian credit unions merged, doubling the organization’s size and becoming one of the largest credit unions in the country. The merged organization adopted one of the former companies’ names, Prospera, and created new shared values as part of their efforts to unite employees and stakeholders under one brand.

Credit unions build strong internal cultures steeped in member and employee engagement. Establishing deep roots in their communities drives their mission to create financial security for members. Preserving this culture was paramount to the newly merged organization’s success.

To create a consistent experience across all aspects of the merged organization, company leaders needed to create an environment where they could maintain a business-as-usual mindset while integrating new systems, processes, and internal best practices. The newly merged organization also recognized the significant value of evolving with the new era of credit unions and continuing as a people-first financial services organization.

Upskilling change capabilities

To maintain their culture and focus on putting people first, leadership knew they needed to upskill teams with change capabilities. To accomplish this at the senior level as well as across the organization, they engaged Prosci as a strategic partner in the transformation process.

Working together, Prosci and the client determined that equipping individuals across the organization was essential to building a culture of change among influential leaders. These leaders were fundamental in revamping and strengthening the internal culture under the refreshed brand.

To get started, eight employees attended the Prosci Change Management Certification Program. A Prosci Senior Change Advisor also led the newly certified practitioners through a Project Acceleration Workshop to help them apply the knowledge, skills and tools they acquired from certification and demonstrate effective change management in action to the organization. The Project Acceleration Workshop created such demonstrable value that they embraced the methodology immediately and began to roll these out on all of their projects.

Prosci helped to further embed a culture of change management by ensuring internal sponsors were brought along in the process. This involved delivering a Change Management Sponsor Briefing to help executives and senior leaders develop a deeper understanding of change management. Prosci Best Practices in Change Management research shows that active and visible sponsorship is the number one contributor to project success. Yet, sponsors often fail because they do not know what is required from them during change. Empowering leaders to fulfill their roles effectively helps ensure their active and visible participation in projects, which helps them achieve more successful outcomes.

Creating a culture of change and change learning

The organization recognized that as they grew, delivered more complex projects, and increased their employee base, they needed change management competency to thrive. The internal People Development team decided to implement change management as a best practice and build a change-ready culture by:

• Acquiring an Enterprise Change Management (ECM) License, enabling access to all Prosci training program content and tools
• Standardizing their change management approaches by adopting the Prosci Methodology across the organization
• Equipping the People Development team to deliver role-based training programs internally at any time, through the Prosci Train-the-Trainer Program

"We are now set up to advance our credit union into a new era for personal banking in Canada, with a community of inspired employees and members."

— Tamsin Lehn, Director – Change Management Office and People Development

Assessing the current state

The organization needed hands-on support to embed change management in their approaches across the organization using their ECM License. The Prosci Advisory Services team helped them start the process by performing a Change Management Maturity Model Audit to assess the organization’s current change management maturity. This informed the creation of a roadmap for applying the Prosci Methodology and tools to effectively build capability over time.

Customizing the approach 

Tailored 4-Year Approach

Working with Prospera, Prosci tailored a post-merger integration approach for a multi-year rollout designed to set up the client for success.

Results

Reaping the rewards of a modern approach to change

Prospera has worked through over 200 integration projects, generating countless change impacts for the credit union’s people and members. In addition to assessing these impacts, the change teams now uncover root causes of resistance and help people overcome barriers to adoption using the Prosci ADKAR^® Model.

Leveraging their Prosci training and ECM License, Prospera is now equipped to run their own change management Project Acceleration Workshops, and performs them on every new project to kickstart change activities and ensure focus.

To support change projects, Prospera established an organizational change team of three change practitioners, supplementing with external support as needed. They also created a change management committee, including human resources and communications team members, as well as employee ambassadors, who collectively support change management efforts across the organization.

As a result, engagement with change management has improved in several ways. The CMO is engaged early on versus having to invite themselves in. Change practitioners commonly engage with project sponsors and leaders, who are prepared to fulfill their roles. Employee engagement saw an 8% bump while the organization’s change management maturity score increased by 6% on a 5-point scale. And people all across Prospera speak a common language around change management.

Working with Prosci, Prospera is quickly becoming a change-ready culture. As a credit union with forward-thinking values and the ambition to increase membership and talent while enhancing internal culture and brand reputation, they continue to grow capabilities for navigating change successfully.