2023 Community Bank Case Study Competition Journal

2023 COMMUNITY BANK CASE STUDY COMPETITION

conversations with their mentors. This allows leaders who have more experience to pass along their expertise to the younger generations of the banking industry. Another major aspect of training would be the establishment of tuition reimbursement for any employee who is seeking to go back to school for further education so that they can excel in their careers. There are several employees currently taking advantage of this benefit, as they can grasp concepts beyond what their current roles may offer. The pandemic has made hybrid work a mainstay for many employees across the country. LINKBANK has done everything in its power to give employees the flexibility to either work from home or out of the office. With the majority of employees coming into the office and a few being hybrid or completely remote. This flexibility gives employees the option to do what they please in terms of remote work. LINKBANK does encourage employees to be in the office whenever they feel comfortable returning. LINK is heavily centered around workplace culture and positively impacting lives through their

work in the local community. That being said, they encourage employees to be in the office whenever possible in order to develop those relations with the community that they serve. One of the main ways LINKBANK stays competitive in the community banking industry is through the implementation of new technologies. Within the past five years, LINKBANK has implemented new VMware cloud desktops which allows users to run VMs directly on a single desktop. This leads to more simplified data center management and increased efficiency among employees. LINKBANK is one of the first community banks to implement this cloud based technology and will help them stay ahead of the curve in the near future. Some of the biggest challenges associated with implementing the cloud desktops is that Jack Henry, LINKBANK’s core processor, requires physical routers on-site at bank headquarters. However, all of the cloud desktops are running in a warehouse in Virginia. Most bank core systems are not designed for clouds, so it has been difficult to make legacy core systems like Fiserv and Jack Henry work on a cloud-based computing system. LINKBANK also makes sure that employees are familiar with the policies and procedures that the IT department uses throughout their day to day work. This ensures that all employees are equipped to handle questions that others might have about the new technologies that LINKBANK enforces. An example of LINKBANK having a great technological success over the past few years relates to their core system conversions. In a

One of the main ways LINKBANK stays competitive in the community banking

industry is through the implementation of new technologies.

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