UFCU has been around a long time, and feasted on the boon of credit unions after the Great Recession. The CEO is a good guy, who makes a point to meet with every new employee. Now he's retiring, which has created a feeding frenzy with the higher-ups, and everything feels like chaos.
With company longevity comes stagnation and a cult-like mentality. Nothing is private at UFCU... people will pry and gossip about why you're sick or just about anything. "The clothes make the man" here-- how you dress is more important than doing a good job.
Women and people with families receive favoritism (eg longer maternal than paternal leave and extra leverage for leaving early). Young, ambitious people do not work here long, because change and the effort it requires are frowned upon as a nuisance within the organization. Mediocrity is celebrated with everyone patting themselves on the back for doing the bare minimum daily.
Over the years, the "culture" has become more corporate and extreme-left leaning due to newer execs. Non-conformity is not tolerated, and yet hiring with reverse-discrimination to support "workplace diversity" is a forced issue (eg it's pointed out boastfully in company-wide posts that they hired people of a certain race, and that makes many feel awkward).
- Employees are forced to be members and be paid through UFCU's banking. No direct deposit to your existing bank account.
- Leaders would rather risk your health and force you to be present in the office than keep you safe. No COVID health protocols are followed in the office, and masks and social distancing are optional.
- Directors and VPs discourage employees from taking sick time and border on abusive behavior.
- Invasive peers, gossip culture, religious topics frequent in office.
- Volunteer events are championed as a commercial endeavor rather than for the sake of goodwill.
- Constant comments from upper management on employee physical appearances border on sexual harassment.
- Dress code is restrictive, formal, and outdated. Keeping up appearances and gowning a 1990s corporate bank dress suit is the backbone of the "culture".
- Terrible, antiquated technology systems too broken to fix, and IT restrictions on computer admin privileges and saved passwords that make the job tedious (but that's part of any bank job).
- Resistance to new ideas across organization due to aging executives who hate technology, and lazy employees who get outraged that they're being asked to do something else. Change is avoided at all costs in order to keep the same mundane protocols.
- No processes, lower employees always scrambling with needless fire drills that fall on them because of incompetent management who avoid work at all costs and procrastinate their deadlines until last minute.
- Managers up to the top executives have no accountability. They have no skills or experience to back up their titles, they just stayed long enough to be promoted, and they constantly conveniently push their responsibilities onto lower ranking employees. (Every project is a game of hot potato.)
- Excessive meetings leave little free time to complete work. (1-3 hour meetings back to back, with 3-5 meetings per day.)
- The majority of employees are apathetic about their jobs, but that doesn't stop the company from constantly gloating that it's the best mortgage lender, according to one affiliate publication every year, and also a great place to work, based on non-anonymous polls which employees are pressured to take.