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Gate City Bank Analysis
Student Name
Industrial/Organizational Psychology
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For a Better Way of Life® is the motto for Gate City Bank. The company provides
financial services to nineteen communities in North Dakota and Minnesota. One might wonder
how a bank can produce a “better way” to life as banks merely exist to take care of the financial
needs of their customers, but Gate City is different than any other bank. Throughout this
analysis, I will introduce you to Gate City as a company, provide information on the Customer
Service Representative position, and explain how Gate City recruits, trains, motivates, and
evaluates their employees in order to better the lives of their customers and communities.
Gate City Bank is a mutual bank with thirty-two offices in North Dakota and the western
part of Minnesota, which provides the same services as any other bank. These include checking
accounts, savings accounts, individual retirement accounts, personal loans, and mortgage loans.
One thing that makes them unique is their mission, it reads “ to provide a welcoming atmosphere
and a commitment to making the lives of our customers and employees better by investing in
them and their communities for a better way of life” ( Gate City Bank, 2010). Employee
volunteerism is a big part of their philosophy which allows for the employees to contribute time
for service in their communities during office hours. According to the Gate City Bank website in
2009, 20,604 hours of service were served by their employees and $1,429,000 was contributed
by the company to non-profit organizations (Gate City Bank, 2010). Even though Gate City
Bank appears to be like any of the other financial institutions, it offers an excellent atmosphere
for its employees, customers, and neighbors.
Gate City is made up of many different groups. As stated before, there are thirty two
locations for the customers to visit, but there is also a corporate office, loan servicing
department, virtual office, and phone banking department. Positions within the locations (also
known as branches) include: a manager, a savings supervisor, customer services representatives,
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tellers, and loan officers. I will focus on one position in the company that works directly with the
customers, customer service representatives (CSRs). As a CSR, one performs all of the duties of
a typical teller; running deposit transactions, answering phone calls, selling products and
services, and working with the customers on their financial needs, but they also open and service
all deposit accounts. When a customer comes in to open a new account, the CSR takes them into
an office and assists them in finding the right account to fit the customer’s needs. To do so, a
CSR must be knowledgeable in all of Gate City Bank’s products and services and able to follow
the procedures to correctly open the account. In order to be hired as a customer service
representative, one must have a high school diploma or equivalent, have effective
communication skills, contain the ability to reason and problem solve, be able to use a calculator
and a variety of specific computer programs, and have the ability to work in a quiet environment
(see Job Description, appendix for detailed information).
With numerous locations, Gate City is almost always looking to hire new employees for a
vast variety of different positions. When a position opens, current employees have the
opportunity to apply for it before it is open to the general public. This way, employees have the
chance to excel in the corporation. Current employees are also encouraged to participate in the
employee referral program. If an employee refers someone outside the company to work in an
open position and the referral is hired and completes ninety days of work, they receive $350.
Employee referrals are an excellent way for companies to obtain hard working and dedicated
employees, as current employees would most likely only refer those which would have the
qualities needed for the job.
If there aren’t any current employees applying for the position, Gate City uses
CareerFargoMoorhead.com and local newspapers for employee recruitment. For employee
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screening, Gate City Bank has an application for employment that can be picked up at any of the
locations or printed off of the company’s website. An application is included in the appendix
along with a voluntary invitation to self-identify form, which Gate City uses as affirmative action
for “governmental record-keeping and reporting requirements”. The voluntary invitation to selfidentify is not given to the supervisors with the application. This prohibits any discrimination in
the selection process based on race.
After the recruitment process, Gate City uses hiring interviews as a means to employee
selection. In the interview, the supervisor places the interviewee in hypothetical, job-related
situations, in which the interviewee has to indicate how they would handle it. This allows the
supervisor to get a feel for how the employee problem-solves, acts in stressful situations, and
communicates orally. In order to avoid snap judgments by the supervisor, the manager must also
interview the qualified applicants at the time of the initial interview or at a later date.
Once an employee is hired, it must go through the new employee checklist. The checklist
is a programmed instruction which contains a list of the numerous policies and procedures one
must read before assisting customers. They must also go through new employee orientation, a
training day held at the corporate office in Fargo, to learn the basics of the teller computer
system. Bandura’s social learning theory fits the way in which Gate City trains their employees.
Bandura believed that with modeling, observing and imitating the behavior of others (Riggio and
Lyman, 2007), the employee is able learn from others and to reproduce the behaviors. The new
employee receives on-site training by working in the teller-line shadowing current tellers and
CSRs. Once the employee is ready, they are audited into their own cash drawer and are assisted
in running transactions by the supervisor for a few weeks. As soon as the supervisor feels the
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employee is ready, they are able to run their drawer and assist customers by themselves. Current
employees also receive training through yearly procedural quizzes and monthly webinars.
A main duty of the branch supervisor is to provide motivation for the tellers and
customer service representatives to produce sales and reduce errors in source documents and
account opening and servicing. The motivation theory that best fits Gate City is the
reinforcement theory. In order to produce sales and reduce errors, positive reinforces and
punishments are implemented. Gate City provides its employees with an incentive program set
on a fixed-interval schedule. Each Quarter, all employees are evaluated by performance appraisal
(which will be further discussed in the following paragraph). The numbers produced by the
performance appraisal dictates how much money the employee receives as an incentive
(reinforcement). Although, punishments are uncommon, they still exist at Gate City. Receiving
no incentive, being lectured by the manager, and requiring additional training are ways in which
employees can be punished.
As previously stated, performance appraisals are significant at Gate City. Based on
performance appraisals scores, the employees in each office are compared by ranking. The
individual with the highest score receives the highest incentive payout, the second highest score
receives the second highest payout, and so-on-and-so-forth. These performance appraisals use
both subjective performance criteria and objective performance criteria to measure the
performance of the employee. Subjective performance criteria used in performance appraisals
would include judgments of individual employee’s performance by the supervisor and/ or
manager. Objective performance criteria used includes number of source document errors which
pertains to errors on deposit slips, withdrawal slips, transfer slips, loan payment slips, universal
journals, and service charge slips; number of deposit and administrative services (DAS) errors
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which pertains to errors on customer forms such as totalmatic forms, stop-payment forms, and
disputed items forms, errors with addresses on mailed items, and errors on signature cards,
revocable proxy cards, and account information sheets; numeric goals for selling products; and
scores on customer service surveys.
Customer service surveys are critical in evaluating individual employee’s performance.
Secret shoppers are hired to make transactions at different locations and grade the employee on
the requirements with each transaction; such as running the transaction in a timely manner, being
dressed appropriately, saying thank you and the customer’s name, and informing the customer
about the tell-a-friend program with the tell-a-friend card. Although an employee must only
receive an 85% or higher to be considered satisfactory, 100%s are favorable.
Customer service surveys are returned to the president of the bank and then given to the
surveyed employee’s supervisor. This flow of communication is known as the downward flow;
messages sent from superiors to subordinates (Riggio and Lyman, 2007). Since Gate City Bank
is primarily located in the Fargo/Moorhead and surrounding areas, communication between
superiors and subordinates is easily initiated. Upward flows are required in communicating the
completion of goals and tasks, and lateral flows are communicated on a regular basis to relay
customer and procedural information. A majority of communication in the Gate City Bank
company is nonverbal. Emails, instant messaging, and post-it notes are primarily used in order to
relay important information to all employees since not everyone is working at the same time.
Weekly meetings are held on Fridays, in which fulltime employees are informed of goals,
procedures, and company information.
As this analysis shows, Gate City Bank is a company that truly cares for its employees,
customers, and communities. The hiring and appraisal processes are excellent, but there are a
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few things that can be improved within the company to even further better lives, employee
training and communication. In order to provide top-notch customer service, each employee
must know to procedures thoroughly. Although webinars and quizzes provide some form of
learning, actually practicing different tasks would be beneficial. Creating assignments to be
completed by using the teller system and manual would allow for employees to perform
transactions they might not have encountered regularly. The communication has been
strengthened by allowing instant messaging between the employees, but I sometimes feel that
upward and downward communication is lacking. Fulltime employees are required to attend the
Friday morning meetings and part-timers are required to listen to the recording, but if the
manager and supervisor would personally recap the meeting to the part-timers instead, it would
allow for feedback from the part-timers. They would then feel more connected to the rest of the
employees.
With these few changes, Gate City Bank would improve its already great working
environment. By doing so, they would also create an even better atmosphere for its customers
and communities For a Better Way of Life!