Member Spotlight: Dee Carothers

CUNA Councils
November 6, 2006

I’m Dee Carothers, vice president of human resources for DHCU Community Credit Union. Our offices are located in the Quad Cities in Illinois, along the banks of the mighty Mississippi.

I've been married to Dean for 35 years and we have two grown children and four

gorgeous grandchildren. I've not only grown up at our credit union, I've grown old with the credit union—I have spent 29 very rewarding years with DHCU.

Biggest challenge for 2006

My biggest challenge is always finding those really GREAT people to hire. You know the ones—great people skills, upbeat positive attitude, willing and anxious to SELL our products and services, attentive to details, willing to go above and beyond what is

expected of them. And of course the really difficult challenge is to never settle for an employee who can’t give us all of those qualities.

Best advice

Take care of your staff! Happy employees = happy members. Pay, benefits, celebrating and rewarding successes, corporate culture, morale, growth opportunities, and life-long learning all play a part in happy employees at our credit union. And we remind ourselves daily that our staff is THE number-one reason for our success.

Greatest benefit of Council membership

The networking opportunities with so many wonderful, talented, and knowledgeable HR practitioners. I love the generous sharing of information between credit unions. Whether it is through the Listerve, the library, or at the annual conference, council members are always so willing to share.

Best part of my job

Without a doubt, the best part of my job is that even after 29 years, I still look forward to going to work every day, enjoying the people I work with, and always looking for new and continued growth opportunities for our staff and our credit union.

My boss and our CEO, Terry Brahm, is a wonderful person to work for, but even more importantly, he understands the importance and role of HR in our organization, and did so years before many credit unions even had such a department.

Hardest part of my job

Letting people go. Sometimes they're great people, but just not a good job fit, which is a hard but necessary decision to make.

Hobbies and interests

Spoiling grandchildren, buying and selling stuff I don't want or need on eBay, getting lost for an hour or two in a good book, and hopping on my husband's Harley with him, where we pretend we are teenagers again!

People would be most surprised to learn that . . .

I still play with dolls! Actually, I collect Fashion Dolls from the 1950s.

Recent book

Good to Great by Jim Collins, an interesting book on why some companies make the leap from good to great and others don't. You can read just about every book out there on this subject and it all comes back to two words: “Your people.”

Life goal not yet accomplished

I’d love to witness the aurora borealis in person one day.

Something that always makes me laugh

Oh, everything makes me laugh—that’s how I’ve stayed semi-sane for all of these years. We're big believers in the FISH Philosophy at DHCU. So we try to incorporate fun into our day-to-day operations. We like our staff to laugh, smile, and enjoy serving our

members.

If you had an extra hour in the day . . .

I’d choose to watch a sunrise—or a sunset—the kind of thing that we don't always make time for.