Working at Greendale

Nine branches, about ninety people, and a hiring philosophy shaped by how long our staff tend to stay.

What the work is

Most of our roles involve talking to members about money, which is a subject people arrive at tense. The skill that matters is not sales. It is being able to explain something financial to someone who is embarrassed not to already know it, without making them feel worse.

We can teach the products. We have not had much luck teaching the other thing.

What we offer

• Full health cover, and the credit union pays the family premium too, which is unusual and deliberate.
• Genuine banking hours. We close at five and we are not open on Sundays, and nobody is answering email at ten at night.
• Paid time for the financial-literacy sessions we run in schools. On the clock, not as volunteering.

What we cannot offer

Big-bank compensation at the top end. If you are a commercial lender who can write far larger loans than our field of membership contains, you will out-earn us somewhere else and we would rather say so early.

Fast promotion, sometimes. People stay a long time here, which is lovely for members and means senior roles open up slowly.

How we hire

A conversation, then a half-day in a branch, paid. You will sit with a teller and a loan officer and see the actual job — including the parts that are repetitive, because those are most of any job and it is dishonest to hide them until week two.

We hire from the counties we serve where we can. A person who already knows the towns has a head start that no training programme reproduces.