Vancity's Competitive Advantage Over Other Types Of Financial Institutions

1. Vancity’s competitive advantage over other types of financial institutions is that it uses innovation to serve the financial needs of its members. This innovation helps keep the company in a healthy financial position. There are many examples of which Vancity uses innovation to help the organization stay strong financially. One of the examples is that Vancity was the first financial institution in Canada to offer mortgages to women. Also, Vancity was the first to use traditional media to market directly to the gay and lesbian community. In addition to this, the organization was the first in all of North America to receive an R1 rating from the Dominion Bond Rating Service. Finally, Vancity was the first financial institution to offer its

2. Vancity keeps its stakeholders happy by maintaining the company’s values which is: “working with people and communities to help them thrive and prosper, all the while operating with integrity, innovation, and responsibility.” The company honours these values by providing its employees with the opportunity to help set corporate policies and procedures that impact both their work and home life. Vancity offers many family-friendly programs which include building a workday that allows flexibility for an employee with a young child. This shows that the company helps keep its employees happy by making sure they can balance out their work-life and their family-life so they are able to thrive at both commitments. Vancity allows employees to wear business casual dress and they are provided with the luxury of listening to music while working. Vancity also has sports teams

Out of the four functions of management, Vancity appears to be doing the controlling function the best. Controlling requires the process of measuring performance and taking action to ensure desired results. In Vancity’s case, they did just that. After being able to keep its employees healthy and happy, Vancity were disappointed to know that the company needs to take action in order to earn the results they want. For example, the co-operative surveys employees annually, and for three consecutive years, they did not meet its targets for employee engagement, which is caused by workforce and budgetary reductions. They achieved less than 64% when the target is set at 75%. In order to achieve the results that the company wants, they set goals. These goals were to reengage employees by increasing investment in training and development, renewing the organization’s IT infrastructure and providing employees with growth opportunity by focusing on new areas. Also, the company looked into the process for conducting employee performance reviews; as a result, it clarified the process. Their goal is to focus on ongoing employee coaching, and provided employees with on-line training and support materials to help them improve in areas identified in the performance reviews. Finally, they plan on examining its monetary and non-monetary compensation strategies in order to achieve desired results. All in all, it is clearly evident that Vancity does the controlling function of management the