Work anniversaries are something that should be celebrated and as our CEO, Ann Hickey, has been in her role for 5 years, we wanted to mark this special occasion for the brilliant achievement that it is.
There’s no doubt running a business is tough and to run a credit union through lockdown, with all of the added pressure of providing financial services to local people with job insecurities, problem debt and little financial resilience, Ann’s work as CEO is definitely worth celebrating.
We took this opportunity to ask Ann some questions to find out more about her role and work in the community and will be releasing a series of questions.
This first series is about the pandemic and how Ann, her team and members have been affected.
1. How has the COVID pandemic affected you and East Sussex Credit Union?
Like many other businesses, we had to act quickly. We had to close our office at Hove Town Hall which we share with our partners Citizens Advices and MAPs and get everyone set up to work from home. This had a big impact on our team and whilst home-working suits some people, not everybody has the space to work from home and that has been challenging in itself. We had to make sure that everyone was supported through this transition however temporary it was going to be.
Luckily we had already digitalised most of our services so we could carry on serving our members almost seamlessly. The worst thing was having to close our face-to-face services but that was a very small part of what we do for all of our members.
2. How has the change from working in an office environment where you see staff, volunteers and members every day, to a place where you are almost working from home alone impacted on you and the team?
We’ve worked on our digital services for our members which was set up and developed even further. You don’t see people face to face. We’ve set up Whats App groups for different groups of staff and we moved our team meetings online. We also had a ‘stand down’ meeting on a Friday just to do some activities for staff like a pub quiz and gifts, just to keep the morale up as home-working suits some people but not everybody, and it was important for people to still enjoy the social aspect of working.
3. What’s it like being a CEO of a credit union during this time of change?
The last 5 years have flown by! We have been very busy and I’ve enjoyed it! I am lucky that I have a highly skilled and supportive board who have guided me in developing ESCU into what it is today, and a strong management team that can get things done
It was the craziest year that I’ve ever had in that everything had to change very quickly. We had to make sure that our staff were safe and that our members continued to be served. We had to adapt our services, we had to get new equipment in. We had to make sure that our staff were okay working from home. We had to communicate with our members to make sure that they knew we were still here for them and that they were still able to pay off their loans and continue to save with us.
We were also aware that for some members they saw a reduction in their income and we’ve had to be flexible when they couldn’t afford the same level of repayments and for some members, seeing a temporary pause on their payments to help them continue to live as normally as they could.
We’ve also been able to take advantage of the grants and local support that has been available from local authorities who we have positive relationship with.
The next series will be released soon when we asked Ann about the credit union movement locally and globally.
