Setting aside time every year to honor your employees may seem like a feel-good idea, but veteran retail banker Richard C. Hartnack also believes in the business purpose behind it.

“There’s a lot of evidence that employee tenure correlates highly with client satisfaction and high performing business units,” says the vice chairman of consumer banking at Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp. Hartnack adds that experienced tellers and consumer lenders can improve customer service significantly on the retail side.

Toward that end, U.S. Bancorp declared April 24-29 Branch Employee Appreciation Week and the company used the occasion to recognize the front-line branch employees. “It’s an opportunity to make sure employees know they’re the heart of a great company,” Hartnack says.

Although U.S. Bancorp had held an annual employee appreciation event for nearly a decade, Hartnack made the occasion a bigger deal when he arrived from Bank of California in June 2005. This year, the company’s 2,430 banking offices in 24 states were festooned with banners and balloons and the top performer in each office was honored by their regional or district manager one day during the week.

The company also held “pinning ceremonies” for employees who had reached their five-, 10-, 20- and 25-year anniversary dates. Those who had been with the bank for 30 years or more received a platinum pin with a diamond chip.

Hartnack declined to reveal how much U.S. Bancorp spends on the program. “It’s an investment in people,” he says.

Hartnack says the investment may be particularly valuable in a market like St. Louis, which U.S. Bancorp entered in 1999 by acquisition. Noting that many of U.S. Bancorp’s branch employees in St. Louis still identify with their legacy institutions, Hartnack says Employee Appreciation Week was one way of creating a greater sense of loyalty for the company.

Although Hartnack declined to provide any specific metrics, he voiced satisfaction with how the St. Louis operation has performed. “The results have been pretty good,” he says. “The rate of account acquisition in the first quarter [of 2006] was up quite substantially.”

Morale-building celebrations are not uncommon in banking. San Juan, Puerto Rico-based Popular Inc. will celebrate its 113th birthday on Oct. 23 of this year. Mari Pat Varga, a senior vice president for communications and leadership with Banco Popular North America, says that Popular’s 13,000 employees—including those in the 139 mainland branches—will celebrate the day by wearing yellow (which the company considers to be the color of prosperity), baking cookies and cupcakes to share with customers and decorating branches.

While this birthday bash isn’t an employee appreciation day per se, Varga says that senior Popular managers often say thanks to the company’s employees. “We bring gratitude to them and they share their gratitude with us,” she says.

For more information about Banco Popular’s approach to employee appreciation, please see “5 Who Fight to Win on the Front Lines” in the November/December 2005 issue of BAI Banking Strategies.

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