2023 Best Places to Work in Greater Louisville
These 50 organizations rose to the top of the annual program, which recognizes the importance of cultivating an exceptional workplace and of leaders who make an effort to ensure their place of employment is a fulfilling place to work. Rankings are based on results of a survey conducted by Quantum Workplace.
Independence Bank
Category: 25-150 employees
Rank: #1
Score: 95.96
Employees: 28
Year founded: 2016
Top executive: Louis Straub II
Why do your employees consider your company/organization a Best Places to Work in Greater Louisville?
We believe we are the best because of our people. We hire the best and allow them to shine. We strive to create a workplace environment where employees are treated like family and encouraged to share ideas to make us better. Their continued learning is supported financially through our education assistance program. Our employees are the second largest shareholder in the company, which has 27 locations in 15 markets in the Commonwealth. Our success is their success. We also encourage a family-first mentality. The last few years have been trying for all homes and making sure to promote a quality of work-life balance is crucial. When you focus on investing in others rather than the bottom line, everything else will fall in place.
How do you keep employees engaged?
Our employees are part of this organization because they are encouraged to be part of something bigger than themselves. It’s more than a job with us. This is an opportunity to work alongside many talented individuals, reinvest back into the company as a shareholder and serve your community through involvement with organizations and causes. Knowing you contribute beyond your desk makes work more meaningful.
What is one practice you’ve created for a workplace culture that fosters inclusion and belonging?
At Independence Bank, we promote a strong culture of feedback. We have multiple methods of collecting feedback from employees and giving them input, including Best Place Places to Work Kentucky, Best Banks to Work and Best Places to Work Greater Louisville surveys as we value our employees’ opinions. Once we receive the survey results, we do a comparison with past years surveys and the most current survey to see areas we have improved in and areas to work on. Each year, the bank holds its annual “5 Things Meeting,” a meeting to discuss the five things we need to change, five things we never need to change and five future projects to consider. From this, enhancements and improvements are made.
What are you doing to increase retention at your organization?
One of our biggest retention tools is investing in educating our employees through the IB University to support personal and professional development of all employees. With our education assistance program, we pay up to $5,250 per year towards an employee to obtain their bachelor’s degree, post graduate degree, certifications, business or banking-related conferences and graduate banking schools. IBU provides tailored career paths, internal certifications, leadership training, in addition to the external educational assistance. Employees are also recognized for their years of service and overall bank performance. For every $100 million in assets the bank earns, they earn a gold coin. Once they earn 10 gold coins and have five years of service, the employee earns a trip to Disney World.
Originally published in Louisville Business First, August 2023