The Underground Community sat down for a Q&A with Teresa Freeborn, President/CEO of Xceed Financial Credit Union about diversity in business.

1. How does Xceed Financial Credit Union tackle the issue of diversification? Who leads it, and how is it communicated and executed upon?

Diversity has always been a priority for me and for our Board, so at Xceed I’m the one who leads the charge. Several years ago, as I became weary of being one of the few females in every CEO meeting I participated in, I started speaking out on the lack of diversity I was seeing, and in particular the dearth of women in leadership. Back then, we started keeping our own stats and I’m very proud of where we stand now. Our workforce is 64% female and 36% male. In terms of ethnicity, some groups are over-represented at Xceed vis a vis the national census, but our ethnic make-up more closely mirrors Los Angeles County where we’re headquartered. In terms of age diversity, we’re pretty well distributed across age groups though we skew a bit younger than the U.S. labor force overall.

2. What are the benefits to the business of Xceed Financial CU as a result of working toward a diverse workforce?

Probably the most valuable benefit Xceed receives is that our diverse workforce keeps us in touch with our members, their needs and concerns, and the broader trends driving the consumer environment. The most basic requirement for any consumer business to compete is relevance. Everything – from the products we offer, to the technologies we pioneer – springs from that business imperative, and our diverse workforce is a huge competitive advantage in keeping us relevant.

3. What benefits to Xceed Financial CU’s members do you see as a result of a diverse workforce?

The sustainability of our business is a direct result of our diverse workforce which mirrors our membership, so the fact that Xceed members can count on their Credit Union to be there for them over the long term is, of course, a key benefit! Beyond that, though, I think you can trace virtually every technology success, product innovation and process improvement to the sort of blue sky thinking we encourage at all levels of Xceed. We have top talent in our leadership ranks, but we also rely heavily on our frontline associates to help us identify points of friction for members, inefficiencies, gaps in our products and services, opportunities to reach new members and serve existing members better, and get a jump on the competition.

4. What can credit unions do as a community to help diversify its volunteers and employees?

A lot! I’m thrilled that, at my urging, we’re finally getting some valid diversity stats for our industry from the Filene Research Institute. This is essential, because knowing where we stand is the first step. I would suggest that each credit union ought to be doing their own counting and keeping their own diversity statistics, setting clear goals for where they’d like to be, and – like any other business goal – creating strategies to achieve it.

Certainly, an effective diversity strategy recognizes that you’re probably going to have to change your employee and volunteer recruitment techniques. If you want to diversify, you can just keep pulling from the same sources. In fact, I think credit unions should require their HR people and recruitment committees to seek out and offer opportunities to qualified candidates who will bring balance to their teams.

At Xceed, we also engage in active mentoring of promising individuals at all levels, and from all corners of the Credit Union – recognizing that we don’t just need to bring along more people who look different from the typical credit union CEO, we also need to be open to those (such as marketers) who bring different experiences and different ways of thinking about business challenges.

A flexible workplace that’s gender-neutral about parenthood is also key, because we don’t have a shortage of women working for credit unions, we have a shortage of women leading credit unions. I would argue that’s largely because lots of employers make it impossible for them to have both satisfying family lives and high-powered careers. At Xceed, we’ve found that family-friendly policies also make us more attractive as an employer to promising young men, as well.