Having dubbed 2010 as “The Year of the Member,” Jamaica’s largest credit union, COK Sodality, has launched its Operation Transformation programme.

Launched at the organization’s January 27th General Staff Meeting – the annual kick-off event which sets the tone for the credit union’s annual activities, the programme has the delivery of an industry-exemplary level of customer Service as its lynchpin and will focus on the internal processes and other delivery agents for that level of service. The programme was conceptualised after a critical and comprehensive evaluation of COK Sodality’s operations. That analysis led to the decision that transformation of the way in which customer service is delivered must be so systemically embedded that it becomes an integral part of the organization’s culture.

COK Sodality’s General Manager, Jacqueline Mighty, emphasized that Operation Transformation honours the organization’s commitment to continuous improvement, but has added that the credit union’s people resources are integral to its success.

“We appreciate that an organization is defined by its people; we will, therefore, be implementing measures which will encourage our team members to buy fully into the need to align the way we behave with the extent to which we are able to achieve our goals,” she added.

Operation Transformation is targeting, among other things, broad-scale employee buy-in to the vision of COK being the leader in all markets it serves, by being a member-focused, financially-sound, profitable and technology-driven organization with a highly competent and motivated team. In support of this, the programme will be paying heightened attention to nurturing and promoting leadership at all levels of the organization; ensuring that the company’s human resources and product offerings are able to satisfy the expectations of the membership; aligning the organization’s vision and goals, and the ways in which its strategies are executed, so that optimal returns can be realized; making adequate use of information technology systems to improve the efficiency of operational management and service delivery; and ensuring that there is increased accountability, across the board.

“Excellent Customer Service starts from within,” the COK Sodality GM reiterated, “and we can, therefore, only replicate externally what we have been able to embrace and implement internally. With that in mind, Operation Transformation is designed to ensure that the positive value which we place on ourselves as financial service providers is what we will communicate to our members, and is what we will use to demonstrate the high value we place on our members,” she added.

Mighty acknowledged that COK has long been viewed as a solid and secure organization which is an authority in the financial services sector, and which has the people resources and management capacity to overcome macro-economic challenges while promoting wealth creation for members. “This remains true; what we also recognize, however, is that we are operating in vastly different economic times and that it therefore becomes even more imperative for us to constantly reassess…and to have the courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace new ways of satisfying the needs of those who we serve,” she added.