What's the Company Culture Like at FirstBank?

Describe how your ERGs are structured. What factors, such as steering committees and leadership support, play a role in upholding these groups?

FirstBank’s ERGs are all structured the same and are all 100 percent employee-led groups with an executive leader who acts a sponsor and advocate for the larger populace and culture. Each sponsor is assisted by the DEI team to support a leadership group, composed of at least five to 15 members generally in a management role or higher. These leadership groups will coordinate and curate diverse opportunities for members and all employees alike within the five main program pillars: culture awareness, community impact, educational, professional development, and networking. Some of our ERGs have one main sub-committee that is focused on actionable items and completion of projects. They generally are the main support while other groups use these sub-committees to oversee different pillar structures within the larger ERGs goals and missions. Each member, regardless of role within the group, is considered a representative of the ERG’s mission and the DEI values of the company. Not only with the larger ERG membership base, but also in their related business area to create awareness around the existence, purpose and how to engage with the culture of the group.

How do the company’s ERGs ensure employees play a role in the decision-making process? What opportunities do team members have to share their opinions and ideas about initiatives and policies?

Each ERG is 100 percent employee-led and we truly mean led by one of our own. While the DEI team oversees, guides, supports and directs these teams into a direction that is built on the foundations of DEI and how it relates to our ERGs members and company culture, we take every opportunity to listen to member feedback, and the group engagement spaces are treated as a space safe for give members to experience physiological safety as well as a sense of community. As the ERG spaces are all inclusive, we encourage allyship and expect the leadership members to lead by example and put their authentic self forward. If our leadership members are the individuals creating the comfortable space, then generally the members follow suit. Our DEI team has moderator authority to remove any comments we deem hurtful or inappropriate based on company policy. The feedback is where we collect ideas around how to serve the larger membership base and company. We consistently send out post-event and activity surveys, whole group member pulse surveys, and every other year, we send out a DEI-specific companywide survey, which focuses on the overall culture and populous feeling around a sense of belonging.

Share examples of some of the initiatives offered by one or more of your company’s ERGs. How do these opportunities enable employees to connect, learn and grow together?

Our events and projects are something I’m proud of. We’re on track to complete about 34 events this year. I think the events and projects that were most impactful were activities like our Veterans ERG Retired Flag Collection and events like our Neurodiversity and Abilities ERG hosting an employee panel discussion about caregiving and our women in technology hosting technology networking experiences and many more. We ensure all the activities we do are inclusive to all employees and we encourage allyship and co-membership within our groups. 

Our Women in Technology ERG was established early on in our programing and at the time of their inception, ERGs weren’t in existence at our company, so they really got the idea rolling. Their tenure to our overall programing has been monumental as we scale, develop and grow the programming structure around how these ERGs are impacting our company’s culture. They have been strategic in how they plan out their year of deliverables. Engagement has increased year over year.

The FirstBank security teams are highly collaborative and engaged. We pride ourselves on having a culture of support. If there is a product, concept or innovation you are interested in exploring, we are excited to hear about it.

People are encouraged to try new things and come up with solutions to problems. They don’t always work. I’ve spent days, sometimes weeks, on projects that didn’t work out. Or we’ve released things that were working and then problems surprised us and caused an outage. The conversation is always, “How did this happen, what could we have done to avoid it?” FirstBank has a great culture for identifying and fixing problems.