News & Views

GRB Manager of Human Resources, Jean Gardner, was quoted in an August 2012 Rochester Business Journal Article on the state of hiring in the local financial services sector.

Despite some challenging economic times over the past few years, local financial institutions continue to grow and add employees, including GRB.

Gardner notes, "Community banking is a people business, so our growth requires us to continuously recruit talented individuals to service our clients and ensure quality in our operations." She also discusses the bank's hiring strategy and what we look for in candidates.

Read the full article here, and connect with Jean here.

In his regular column, On Performance, for the Rochester Business Journal, Brand Integrity's Gregg Lederman writes about the importance of branding and company culture to drive performance and profits.

The October 26, 2012 column suggested using a 60-second reminder to keep company values top of mind, with employees "living" them on a daily basis. As Lederman mentions in the article, in 2011, GRB worked with Brand Integrity to refresh our values, add actionable behaviors, and created the GRB Experience:

• Lead by Example (how we do our best work)
• Unified Team (how we depend on each other)
• Remarkable Client Experience (how we delight our clients)

These values are what GRB employees strive to deliver to both each other and our clients every day. The 60-second reminder that we use here is regularly scheduled meeting agenda items. At weekly meetings, managers from all departments discuss with their teams the tenets of our values, or examples of the values in action.

In no small part because of this weekly attention to our values, GRB's scores on an employee survey of how consistently the behaviors were delivered increased almost 10%. Sixty seconds a week, worked into already existing meetings, is strengthening our brand because our employees are actively engaged with it.

Read Gregg's full column here.

Congratulations to Leann Hicks, CFO at Pharos Systems. She was honored today with the award for Financial Executive of the Year - Small Business Category at today's annual luncheon.

Co-presented by the Rochester chapter of Financial Executives International and the Rochester Business Journal, the award recognizes financial executives who have made outstanding contributions to their organizations and to the community during the past year.

Read the RBJ's article here.

Thanks to a stable regional economy and a local customer base well-known to lenders, regional commercial lending standards have stayed the course since the 2008 financial crisis, reports the Rochester Business Journal.

Dave Halladay, senior vice president and GRB's chief lending officer, is quoted extensively in the article. "Customers who put expansions on hold are now looking to grow." He adds that GRB is making loans in sectors from manufacturing to sevices.

Every year the RBJ recognizes Rochester’s best business websites. Winning websites are selected by a panel of judges, with awards presented in 11 categories.  At this morning's awards ceremony, GRB won "Best of the Web" in the banking/finance category!  Read the RBJ article here.  Photos after the jump.

After months of hard work, GRB re-launched our new website in November 2010, looking to highlight our unique culture and the Rochester small businesses we are proud to have as clients. The work paid off as we recently were selected as a Finalist for the Rochester Business Journal’s 2011 Best of the Web awards.