Preserving EPM's Culture and Vision Through Proactive Organizational Growth

Growth is necessary for the evolution of our organization and the safeguarding of our industry. We’ve learned that growth not only in numbers but in capability across our existing workforce helps us become proactive to face challenges and opportunities ahead.

We protect ourselves by being proactive instead of reactive. Decisions we started making back in April of 2021 are the ones we are reaping the benefits of now, and we strive to strengthen our teams so we can continue that pattern.

Growth has multiple meanings and perspectives. Increasing connection is important, and that may mean we have more locations popping up over time. But especially with the changing capabilities of an increasingly virtual world, that may mean we invest less in growing physical spaces and invest more in equipping our people with the ability to grow professionally and personally and apply those strengths to building out our vision.

Proactive Growth Strategies

At EPM, our leadership is focused on education, evolution, and engagement of our workforce. As a stronger collective, we will be increasingly equipped with the tools for success in the long term.

Adding resources is important, but the last thing we want to do is hire from outside and then have to make cuts when we’ve overextended ourselves. That’s something we are observing in the industry now and something we want to be aware of when it comes to making decisions about the resources we do bring on board. It makes sense to bring on people who fit the vision and culture, but we must also sustain our growth by increasing our internal capabilities.??

Our leadership is consistently looking at ways to expand the education and roles of the individuals on their teams and do cross-training so we can maximize each team member, face the challenges when we have volume growth and avoid bottlenecks.?

We are consistently evaluating our process flows to equip our teams across the board so we can support other departments. That takes top-tier teams and the leadership's ability to maximize and build the skills of their team members.

Empowering Teams to Perform at High Levels

We always strive for high-quality performance. Not necessarily more, but always better. We need to understand how people who want to be involved in training access those opportunities and provide ease of access and a variety of methods and opportunities to communicate with the leadership openly.

Talent without character is like a Lamborghini without gas. We need to build teams that have utilized important soft skills and continually refine them,? alongside implementing cross-training and robust power to close a loan. We simultaneously want to equip teams with the ability to take a chance at bat with our rollouts and existing initiatives and gain the opportunity to learn something new and make necessary adjustments.

Our growth is made possible only by the strength and talent of our people. While it’s vital for those people to align with our culture and vision, that is also the biggest challenge. It’s one we take very seriously and will continue to proactively address and improve through our actions and initiatives always to empower people more.