The 5 Most Important Steps to Building a Branch Headquarters

by Kurt Klassen, EVP of LEVEL5

Some of the largest companies in the world—including tech companies like Google and Meta—are shifting back to an in-person work culture. With the “back to the office” trend gaining steam, how is your credit union or community bank preparing?

Not only that, but we’re also seeing small and medium-sized financial institutions looking to increase branch efficiency by centralizing as many functions as possible—specifically customer support and lending. 

These two market conditions come together to create an increased value on a corporate headquarters location that can be the hub for centralized operations and the place where your corporate culture is nurtured.

We’ve identified the five most important steps to building a branch headquarters. Each step requires focus and expertise. When they all work together, you end up with a branch headquarters that represents your brand well, cultivates and grows a healthy culture, and (most importantly) serves your customers effectively and efficiently.

1 - Assess your specific needs in a headquarters location.

You must begin by having a clear understanding of your needs in a headquarters location. Many credit unions choose a hybrid headquarters/branch approach as a way to get the HQ they need and at the same time, reaching a new market of potential customers. 

With that approach, you need to do all of the same due diligence of understanding your ideal customer profile, the nuances and intricacies of your target market, the differentiators that set you apart from your competitors, and your past/current financial performance to guide every aspect of your decision-making. This includes digging into both your internal data and data sources for your market, extracting actionable insights. 

For a headquarters location, you will also need to get feedback from different departments and stakeholders regarding their expectations and desires for the new headquarters. You can use either internal surveys or focus groups to obtain this information, which will also give you the opportunity to manage expectations in terms of balancing budget with desired amenities.

The insights from these multiple data sources can provide parameters for your potential budget, location, staffing requirements, operational functions that will need to be supported at the headquarters, necessary square footage, and the technology you’ll need to deploy. 

This strategy phase is always critical whenever building a growth strategy—there are even more factors to consider when planning your headquarters. This is the first step because it is the foundation on which the other steps are built—the hub in the middle of the wheel that holds all of the pieces together.

2 - Identify your unique technology and staffing requirements.

Every headquarters is unique, but they share similar characteristics. More importantly, the questions that need to be answered are always the same.  

When making decisions about technology and staffing for your headquarters branch, you’ll need to answer these questions. 

• What are the required and projected headcounts for each department to be housed at the headquarters?
• Which departments need to be adjacent to each other in order to better facilitate collaboration?
• How much space should you allocate for collaboration and how much for offices and individual workstations? Will any of your staff work remotely for a part of their week? If so, how much space should you allocate for flexible workstations?
• What technology needs will your central staff require to work with efficiency and effectiveness? 
• How will digital signage, wayfinding, secured access control, and two-way video solutions with branches be handled?
• What unique requirements will you need to meet regarding power, environmental controls, resource scheduling, and facilities management?

Questions like these can only be answered through extracting insights from the data you gathered during the strategy phase described above. With the right insights, you’ll be able to anticipate the needs of both your customers and staff at the headquarters branch so you can design and implement the perfect-for-you tech stack that reduces friction and increases engagement.

3 - Determine the best location for your headquarters.

In addition to the normal factors of determining a branch location (see our article here for more about site selection), a headquarters branch requires that you consider larger organizational factors.

For example, many credit unions host all of their branch staff at the headquarters once or twice a year for company meetings and culture-building events. The energy that comes from gathering as many of your dispersed staff as possible to one location can have a profound effect on staff retention, morale, and productivity.

If that’s a part of your plan, you’ll want to consider travel methods and times from your different locations to make participation at your network-wide events as easy as possible for as many of your staff as possible.

This consideration adds another layer of complexity to your site selection and acquisition process. Do you see how the strategy development in step one above informs the location decision? With a clear strategy as your guiding light, you can make decisions about location based on what fits your strategy, not price alone.

Btw, location is not the place to save money in any branch growth strategy. A great branch or headquarters in a bad location will yield poor results. A good branch or headquarters in a great location will drive predictable growth for years to come. Make the investment now and reap the benefits later.

4 - Design a space that communicates your brand and creates an engaging experience for staff and customers.

Your headquarters branch will serve as a flagship location for your brand, so you should treat it that way when considering the design. That includes colors, finishes, and environmental branding, of course—but it shouldn’t stop there. You should use it as an opportunity to showcase the best tools at your disposal for a beginning-to-end engaging customer experience.

Not only that, but for your central staff who may not have in-person customer-facing responsibilities on a daily basis, how will you create an engaging experience for them when they come to work every day? Don’t underestimate the value of the physical environment for your team when it comes to reinforcing your brand culture as well as creating spaces intentionally designed to make work more efficient and enjoyable.

All of these design elements—for both customers and staff—increase engagement and yield results over time. As more of our interactions are happening online, the value of in-person experiences has increased. Each step of the customer journey should be considered when designing the floor plan and the location of the different service elements they will need to interact with. Then, with that work done, the final touches of colors, furnishings, and finishes can be completed as well.

5 - Construct the building and prepare your staff.

While there will be many construction details to manage throughout the building process, you should also use that time to prepare and train your staff as much as possible for how things will work in the new space. And hopefully your design-build partner will be actively managing the construction side of things so you can focus on your staff.

Even before the building is complete, you can begin the training process with staff who will be working in the branch environment. Using the floor plan and renderings, you can walk staff through the desired customer experience and discuss where and how key operations will take place.

From a training perspective, the actual operation of the technology integrated into the branch is secondary to ensuring staff are focused on the customer service aspect primarily. Not only that, but we’ve found it can be extremely helpful to work with key staff together and clarify how handoffs and transitions will be handled to optimize both customer experience and staff efficiency. By engaging the right members of your staff in these discussions, they will have more ownership in the process and be ready to implement it with excellence on day one.

This is also the time where you should consider the marketing efforts that will need to take place when the new headquarters branch opens—including both internal and external audiences. How and when will you communicate to all of your different stakeholders about the opening? Will you host internal and external events to celebrate it? Answering these questions is a critical piece to maximizing the return on the strategic investment you’re making in the new headquarters.

Let LEVEL5 Guide You Through The Complexity

With all of the different disciplines, details, and decisions included in building a new headquarters for your branch network, you will need a partner to guide you all along the way. With LEVEL5 as your strategic partner, you’ll be able to stay focused on running your credit union while your design-build partner makes this complex process more simple. 

When all of these disciplines work together—strategy, technology, site selection and acquisition, design, and build—you’ll have a headquarters that serves you well and drives long-term growth.