Spring Training: Area Banks Step Up to Home Plate With Management Training Initiatives

The old adage “good help is hard to find” seems to fit the local banking industry. And with the influx of several new and new-to-the-market banks, good help is becoming even harder to keep.

In July, the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal estimated there were at least 2,200 bank employees in Benton and Washington counties combined. Many of those were front-line tellers and back-office support staff. But there’s an ever-growing population of middle management spurred by the booming banking biz and continued branching by existing banks.

That’s one reason some area banks have developed internal management, executive and career programs. The idea is to train and retain the best employees for the bank’s mid-level and upper-level management — to create a deep bench for the team’s future plays.

Many bankers said training programs generate loyalty and immerse newbies in a bank’s culture, creating good habits before bad ones can form.

Two major area banks have official mid-level management training programs — Arvest Bank Group Inc. and ANB Financial N.A.

Many other banks said they will train the right people for the right positions and support external training as it’s needed.

Numbers are hard to come by. No bank was able or willing to say how much it spends on training initiatives, and salaries are hard to pin down because of the disparity of experience and types of positions.

However, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2004 the median annual salary for a loan officer in the United States was $49,200, about $1,000 higher than in the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers metropolitan statistical area.

ANBin’ It

Nat Bothwell, marketing director for ANB Financial N.A. in Rogers, was the first unofficial trainee within his bank group.

It started with his first job at the First National Bank of Bentonville, which became First Bank, which was then sold to Worthen Bank.

Bothwell said Dan Dykema, then president of FNB, had him work around the bank in several departments. Bothwell had just graduated from the University of Arkansas and was on his way to a career in lending. The idea was to let Bothwell get his hands dirty in a little bit of everything and find the best fit for himself and the bank.

About the time he finished his two-year rotation, the bank sold to Worthen. Dykema and several employees “walked across the street” and started Arkansas National Bank.

Thus started Bothwell’s career, which eventually led him into marketing, an area where he has natural aptitude. Bothwell said the experience was priceless.

“I know for a fact I write better copy,” he said.

Some advertising agencies don’t understand banking because they’ve never worked in it, he said. But Bothwell’s banking experience makes him uniquely qualified to head the marketing department for ANB.

Bothwell said that Dykema and other managers invested so much time and effort in his career, he felt somewhat obligated to work hard and return the favor.

After Arkansas National Bank — now ANB Financial — got rolling in 1994, the management team set up an official training program.

Michelle Jackson is the assistant vice president of the career development program, or CDP, for ANB. She is married to the son of Debra Jackson, president and chief operating officer of ANB.

Michelle Jackson said ANB has three sections to its CDP: the core program, which lasts about six months; the advanced program, which runs about a year (after taking the core); and the executive program that takes associates on a five- to seven-year track.

The time it takes to complete each program varies, depending on the individual and the bank’s needs, Michelle Jackson said. By mid-May, she will have 13 people in various stages of the bank’s CDP.

ANB has about 135 total employees, so about 10 percent of them are in the training program.

The core program includes a brief overview of operations and the holding company, as well as teller operations and back office operations. Trainees spend one to four weeks in each spot and get hands-on experience. They also help fill in gaps while other associates are in transitional phases or on vacation, Jackson said.

If employees do well, they can apply to move on to the advanced program. Before they are allowed to enter, however, they interview with the personnel committee (Dykema, Debra Jackson and others). Michelle Jackson said the committee is looking for good attitudes, a dedicated work ethic and drive.

If the employee makes the cut, he or she can enter the advanced program, where they spend three to four months in various departments such as consumer and commercial loans, collections (to see what happens if they make a bad loan), and even become licensed to sell insurance.

Michelle Jackson said she tells each trainee, “make sure you learn something” as they move into various departments.

Then, if they show interest and aptitude, employees may have a shot at the executive program, though recruits from outside ANB may also apply for the program.

“We try to put them through a pretty strenuous interview process,” Michelle Jackson said.

In the executive program, employees work as an insurance agent or a credit analyst for a year or so, and work in commercial and Small Business Administration lending. Usually those “graduates” become assistants to ANB’s executive officers, who are the top executives in each of ANB’s 11 offices, Michelle Jackson said.

“You look at every day that you’re here as your job interview,” she said she tells trainees in the CDP. “You’ve accepted to be under a microscope.”

Debra Jackson said the program is different from what it was five years ago because it is constantly getting updated and tweaked to stay on top of a changing industry and market.

“I believe that it allows us to organically grow our own management team,” Debra Jackson said. She noted that it also helps indoctrinate ANB’s employees into a culture of customer service.

Michelle Jackson declined to say what the starting salary was for a graduate of any of the programs. On a similar note, she said it’s basically impossible to figure how much the bank spends training any one individual.

However, some estimates say that it costs as much as $10,000 to train a person for an entry-level teller position.

ANB’s program doesn’t have a cap on how many employees it will take on, she said. In fact, ANB recently spent some time recruiting at the University of Arkansas and at three western universities because the bank is looking to expand in Utah and Wyoming.

“We don’t want to pass up any talent that might walk through our doors,” she said.

Arvest’d

Larry Wheaton, senior vice president and branch administrator at Arvest Bank-Fayetteville, said it took him about three years to learn everything that his management trainees can now learn in about eight months. He joked that he climbed the ladder the old fashioned way — by changing jobs and learning each position.

He now carries a personal digital assistant so he can access the work and training schedule of his management trainee employees while he’s making rounds at the Fayetteville branches.

In Fayetteville’s bank, there are now three trainees, or about 10 percent of the bank’s employees in that town. But there’s a constant in- and out-flow through the system, Wheaton said, with as many as four at a time.

Because Arvest banks operate autonomously, the management trainee program in Fayetteville may not be the same as in Bentonville, and other banks may not even offer an official program, Wheaton said.

The program is similar to ANB’s in that it seeks to churn out well-rounded employees with experience in various departments.

Candidates for the program are people with either some banking background or management background so that the bank can focus on training one or the other. Current Arvest employees are welcomed, but they are required to apply.

Fayetteville’s was one of the first within the company and is one of the most comprehensive. Wheaton said trainees will end up as assistants to managers with a bottom starting salary of about $24,000 after a three- to six-month training period. But salaries and times vary, depending on the individual, he said.

Wheaton wasn’t able to estimate the bank’s cost in training per employee.

During those three to six months, Wheaton and Fayetteville’s sales manager, Gaye Wilcox, estimated a trainee will spend about 60 eight-hour days either in the middle of hands-on learning, classroom work or some type of computer-aided training. Most of the rest of the time is spent performing the job at different branches and “shadowing” a mentor.

Chad Evans, executive vice president and sales manager at Arvest Bank-Bentonville, was one of the first Arvest employees in the management program.

He started with the bank in Fayetteville (then still McIlroy Bank & Trust) as a part-time teller in 1990. The bank had identified its first “in-store location” (a bank within a Wal-Mart or grocery store) in 1992. Since in-store banks tend to be small in footprint and staff, employees need to be able to perform many tasks, from teller transactions to basic lending.

Evans was asked to participate in training that would give him experience in the different areas and was then hired as the branch’s manager.

It was a long trip around the company in several different locations but Evans eventually made it back to his hometown in his dream job. Among other titles on his bookshelf are copies of “Good to Great” by Jim Collins, “On Selling” by Zig Ziglar and a dictionary.

He said the training program in Fayetteville has changed a lot since the early days and that it’s all for the good of the company.

When asked if the program could create a saturation point of managers and assistants, he said, “We need a deep bench. We’ve got to have others to step up [when the time comes].”

Grouped

Arvest as a bank group has a training facility in Lowell with several training rooms and a mock-up teller line. The facility is a place for centralized classes and teller training.

Jenny Carithers, human resource specialist, oversees the bank’s leadership development program, which is in the bank’s internal audit department and is based out of the Lowell facility.

The two-year program requires a degree in finance or accounting, or some experience in auditing, she said, and is open to Arvest employees or recent college graduates.

The LDP requires participants to take about 80 hours of classroom training put on by the bank and other courses offered by the American Bankers Association, as well as two research projects/presentations akin to college-level term papers, Carithers said.

Each trainee works with an auditor and helps perform audits throughout the bank, she said.

NWACC’d

In 2005, 14 area banks joined forces and invested money to launch the Banking Career Preparation program at the Northwest Arkansas Community College.

Pam Watkins, assistant dean of corporate and continuing education at NWACC, wouldn’t say how much each bank put up for the program, but the money went to buy books the students can check out through the library system and seeded the initial curriculum.

The BCP is a 10-week, 70-hour non-credit series of courses that helps train students for entry-level bank positions. The tuition is about $537 per person without books, but there may be a price increase this year, Watkins said. Classes are at night and on the weekends.

The banks identified a need in their hiring for associates with fundamental banking knowledge and “soft skills,” or customer-service-oriented training, Watkins said.

The curriculum includes four main courses: Excelling in the Workplace, Today’s Teller, Principles of Banking and Relationship Selling.

Two of the courses are eligible for credit with the American Bankers Association.

The program just started its first cycle in February and will graduate its first 15 students in late April. “Three or four” people have already been hired by area banks, Watkins said.