Our Dedicated People
Best Companies
To deliver long-term sustainable value for all our shareholders, we strive to engage, develop, retain and attract a thriving workforce. The people that work at Guaranty Bank & Trust are dedicated, humble, and passionate. We know that our success as a bank would not be possible without them. We encourage them to embrace and drive change, pursue learning and personal growth, always think like owners, and to be involved in the betterment of their communities.
Our devotion to our employees has earned us a spot on the Texas Monthly “Best 100 Companies to Work for in Texas” every year since 2010. We have also received a Cornerstone Award from the Texas Bankers Association, a Texas Treasure Business Award from the Texas Historical Commission, a 5-Star rating from BauerFinancial, and a “Best Banks to Work For” citation from American Banker.
Employees
We believe that employing and empowering a varied workforce that reflects our customers and communities gives us a competitive advantage.
- To reinforce our commitment to embracing our differences and our expectations for equal opportunity in daily employment decisions, everyone at Guaranty Bank & Trust receives training on an annual basis.
Health and Well-being
We care deeply about the health and well-being of our employees. As a testament to that, we work hard to provide benefits that help them achieve a balanced, healthy, and full life.
- We provide flexible work options and generous paid time off for vacations, parental leave, and to perform community service.
- Our wellness program provides our employees with access to educational courses on specific health topics including how to achieve a healthy weight, manage stress, and detect health problems early.
- Employees and spouses who are enrolled in the company health plan and who achieve specific health goals receive a discount on their monthly insurance premiums.
- We offer an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) to help guide employees and their family members through some of life’s biggest challenges.
We are a family, and our employees not only show up for work, but they also show up for each other. Employees have the option to donate up to 16 hours of unused paid time off annually to Guaranty’s paid leave time donation bank. The donations are anonymously given to employees who have depleted all time-off and are experiencing a medical emergency. Since the donation bank was established in 2019, employees have donated over 2,592 hours to help their coworkers and, as of December 31, 2022, over 1,100 of those hours have been given to employees in need. In addition, employees have the option to contribute monetarily towards the Employee Benefit Fund, which helps employees and their families during significant hardships. Since establishing this fund in 2002, more than $386,000 in financial assistance and/or care packages have been given to over 1044 employees.
In 2021, we implemented a flexible work schedule for employees whose positions are conducive to those types of arrangements in order to enhance work-life balance with our staff and to maintain our constant focus on ways to strengthen Guaranty’s culture.
Learning and Development
We keep our team’s development and well-being at the center of our decisions and actions, and our team, in turn, keeps our customers at the center of everything they do. We foster professional and personal growth with continuing education, on-the-job training, and development programs.
Guaranty University is home to our internal compliance training for employees to develop into highly competent and educated banking professionals at all levels. In addition, through our partnership with LinkedIn Learning, our employees can expand all professional development skills free of charge. In total, our employees spent nearly 1,500 hours in training, an average of 4 hours per employee, during 2023.
We also have a leadership development program, which is designed to build the leadership skills of our vice president and senior vice president team members. This training helps strengthen our existing leadership team, which in turn helps retain and strengthen our entire workforce.
We have also invested in a robust management development program designed to develop comprehensive bankers who understand all aspects of our operations and embrace our core values. The training program generally lasts 12 to 18 months and includes rotations through each primary department. Successful graduates of the program are often put in future managerial positions. Several of our market presidents and managers are graduates of our training program.
Employee Engagement
Effective and frequent communication is a top priority for us. We believe that sharing ideas and information, celebrating our successes, and seeking improvement opportunities drive growth and help us create an engaged and satisfied workforce. To that end, the Guaranty Bank & Trust ‘Idea Bank’ was initiated to facilitate innovation and source idea generation from all employees. The ideas range from financial improvements to internal efficiencies, to cultural suggestions, to improvements in customer service. There are no bad ideas, we welcome and evaluate each one, and many are put into practice.
We also hold bi-weekly meetings with all employees to cultivate and discuss our company culture and mindset, which is derived from the book 'Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service’. Our own culture book sets the tone for who we are as a bank, how we show up as a team, and establishes expectations for how we serve our customers and interact with fellow colleagues. Employees are trained to deliver Raving Fans service to both our internal and external customer. Those who exemplify our Raving Fans mindset and live out our core values can be nominated to receive awards, including quarterly cash awards.
