HUNTSVILLE — Get all your team members in their right seat on the bus. Play to everyone’s individual strengths. Put people in positions where they best benefit the organization and where the team member’s career will benefit as well.
That is one of the secret ingredients in Bank Independent’s recipe for success, and one that has been handed down from Community Engagement Leader Hallie Mauldin’s great-grandfather.
But there was a five-year period after graduating from Auburn in 2017, the highly independent daughter of Bank Independent CEO and President Macke Mauldin, was uncertain whether she would pursue her place on the bus or if she would be the first fourth-generation Mauldin to work for the 75-year-old family-owned community bank.
“I thought pursuing any business career meant I had to go into accounting and finance,” said Mauldin, who had a marketing degree. “I had an idea about becoming a speech therapist so I moved to Birmingham to pursue it.”
Mauldin laughs at herself when she remembers the first time she saw a close-up picture of the human throat. “Ugh. I decided that was not for me!”
She then sought a career counselor who recommended she pursue residential real estate and Birmingham was a good place to start.
“I absolutely loved it,” Mauldin said.
But ol’ dad didn’t give up on her. The senior Mauldin predicted circumstances would bring her back when the timing was right.
“As I look at it now, it’s funny how my dad had a vision of the whole situation unfolding,” she said. “What he told me two years ago, began actually happening last year with the new operations center opening in downtown Huntsville and the other two locations under construction in south Huntsville and in Madison.
“After a while, the real estate job grew stale and it was not helped by COVID. I had reached a point where I needed another opportunity for growth, and I did not see that in the organization where I was working.
“I think I always knew that down the road I wanted to be part of the bank in some form or fashion, but I didn’t know where or if I fit in, and I didn’t know in what capacity that would be.”
The problem was, as she was deciding to get serious about joining the bank, there were no openings in areas where she had expertise.
“They had no idea what to do with me,” Mauldin said. “So I went through the testing and application process, following all the normal protocols new hires go through.
“I had some time, so I decided to go through a Bank Independent Campus2Career program.”
Campus2Career is a yearlong onboarding process. Mauldin visited every department in the bank and reached a high-level understanding about how the bank operates.
The program allowed her to pull together all the pieces of the business like a jigsaw puzzle.
“I wanted to go through this process and get to know everybody, get to know how the bank runs and a behind the scenes look at why we run the bank the way we do,” Mauldin said.
So. last January, her dad’s eyes lit up when she agreed to move to Huntsville.
Last January, Mauldin joined the downtown Huntsville location, then moved back to the Shoals where she is community engagement leader for the Florence/Shoals market.
“We will be hiring for a community engagement leader in Huntsville very soon because we want someone on the ground in Huntsville doing what my team does in Florence,” she said. “They will be solely focused on Limestone and Madison County.”
Most of Mauldin’s day is chock full of planning, organizing and coordinating community engagement events for both customers and team members.
She kicked off the bank’s annual roadshow on Presidents Day, an event that started years ago in which select members of the team hit the road to share news about Bank Independent.
“Presidents Day is a bank holiday but all the team members who participated, were paid for their time coming to work,” she said.
She also puts together the companywide in-house conference every year that brings together all 620 team members under one roof. to enjoy a full day of inspirational and informative talks with bank leaders and executives.
On the community outreach front, Mauldin stressed the importance of giving back to the communities the bank serves.
“We’re big on giving back to our communities,” she said. “We started the Helping Hands program after the devastating tornadoes that affected places like Phil Campbell in 2011.
“It was so successful we have expanded it, providing diverse charitable giving and community outreach initiatives to communities where BI has banks.”
One of those initiatives as part of the Helping Hands program is four quarterly “Share” drops throughout the year.
In January, Shelter Share kicked in to help provide food and medication to animals in shelters.
In March, they begin the Food Share drive followed by School Share in July to raise money for student school supplies.
The big one is the Toy Share drive in November and December to provide new or lightly used toys to underserved children.
Mauldin’s team is focused on just the right balance between customer service and service to team members.
It appears they found it.
Bank Independent has won Most Beloved Workplaces multiple times for its commitment to a positive culture and engaging environment for employees, all centered around the vision and mission of the bank.
“Our team members are the ones who are really servicing the customers and we never lose sight of that,” Mauldin said. “We want people to leave every visit to our bank with overwhelmingly good feelings about banking with us.”
Mauldin admits she is in a unique position where she knows what her future holds.
“I am very passionate about people, whether it is the people out in the communities or whether it’s Bank Independent team members, I am just continuing that legacy my dad and uncles, grandfather and great-grandfather started and have carried all these years,” she said.
“I hope to elevate that legacy, one that has worked for over 75 years.”
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