Over 30 employees met Wednesday to participate in the CU*Answers “Be an Innovator” Idea and Networking lunch.  These meetings encourage collaboration and provide employees the opportunity to present their own innovative ideas or ways to improve processes at CU*Answers.  This meeting was the second company-wide event.

Randy Karnes, CEO of CU*Answers opened the meeting with a keynote on the importance of innovation at CU*Answers and in the credit union industry.  After his address, seven employees presented their own original ideas to the group.  These ideas ranged from growing an employee mentoring program to developing an additional service for clients to enhancing the onboarding process of new programmers.   Attendees selected the idea they wanted to vet and worked for the rest of the meeting in groups with the goal of implementing the ideas.

Alycia Meyers, coordinator of the group, reported that people who participated in the event came from all areas of the company and held both management and non-management positions. “The feedback of the group was overwhelmingly positive,” she said.  “One person in management reported that he felt there was ‘good interaction between people working together.’ Other people liked the ‘support from management’ and the ‘open dialogue and small group vetting’.”

Randy Karnes, CEO at CU*Answers said about the group, “The innovators group at CU*Answers is designed to challenge to our corporate designs for innovations.  We value it as a volunteer-employee-challenge to the ways we drive change into our network.  A group to innovate on the processes of making things happen everywhere we can.  It takes practices to put ideas out there, to challenge entrenched, and to lead in bringing things to market both internally and externally – the innovators group project is to build that experience and for generations of CU*A participants to take ownership of the responsibility to champion our future.”

Be an Innovator lunches are scheduled every two months.  The next event is scheduled for July.