Human Resource Initiatives

Commitment to our Employees

At Tompkins Financial, our culture is underpinned by our core values, including Commitment to and from our Employees.

The success and growth of our business is largely dependent on our ability to attract, develop, and retain a diverse population of talented and high-performing team members at all levels of our organization. Accordingly, the company strives to offer competitive salaries and benefits that are consistent with employee positions, skill levels, experience, and geographic location. In a drive to remove bias from the candidate screening process, we completed a review of over 300 job descriptions to remove biased language.

A key component of our recruitment and retention strategy is to offer employees at all levels the opportunity to participate in the company’s success.  We maintain a robust profit-sharing plan for all employees who meet minimum service requirements.  As of December 31, 2022, 75% of all employees received a profit-sharing contribution during 2022.

Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging

Our commitment to diversity, inclusion and belonging begins with our Board of Directors.  Our Board believes that including a variety of important perspectives in the boardroom ultimately results in more informed decision-making. Accordingly, in identifying potential nominees, the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee also considers whether a particular candidate adds to the overall diversity of the Board. The Committee seeks nominees with a broad diversity of experience, professions and perspectives, including diversity with respect to race, gender, geography, and areas of expertise. Of our fourteen (14) director nominees at the 2023 Annual Shareholders Meeting, five (5) identify as women and two (2) identify as persons of color.

At Tompkins we value belonging; the sense of acceptance, being empowered and recognized as an important contributor to Tompkins’ success. We continuously strive to build an inclusive workforce that reflects the diversity and strength of the communities we serve. With Board and Senior Leadership Team support, we are committed to empowering and engaging our workforce in creating and sustaining a culture that embraces diversity and promotes inclusion and belonging both inside and outside of our organization. 

Tompkins Workforce Demographics: Minority Representation

Data as of 12/31/2022
* Includes team members who self-identify as Hispanic or Latino, Asian, Black or African American, Two or More Races, or American Indian or Alaska Native

Tompkins Workforce Demographics: Female Representation

Our Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Initiative brings together minds and ideas from across the company to implement educational sessions and cultural celebrations. Our team has implemented several initiatives since its launch, including the following:

• Partnering with Human Resources on onboarding and mentoring to ensure a focus on diversity, inclusion and belonging.
• Increased employee communication to include resources and opportunities for employees to have access to diversity, inclusion and belonging education, get involved in events, submit ideas and suggestions, and increase engagement in fostering an inclusive culture.
• Hosted events such as the Veterans Coffee Hour honoring our Veteran employees, the DEI Book Club, Launch of Employee Resource Groups, Chalk The Walk and DEI Discussion Groups.
• Each month we take the opportunity to provide education and increase awareness of difference, inequality, history and culture. Examples of monthly highlights include: Black History Month, Suicide Prevention Month, Domestic Violence Awareness, Women’s Equality Day, Americans with Disabilities Act, and Unconscious Bias Training.
• Established social justice groups in each market to focus on diversifying our community outreach efforts.

Tompkins has partnered closely with the newly formed Westchester Multicultural Chamber (WMCC) whose mission is to seek economic equity and equality through Multiculturalism. The WMCC is targeting the divide between privilege and poverty in Westchester, providing immediate support for entrepreneurs and small business owners in order for those currently underutilized to grow their talents and positively impact the Westchester area. Tompkins will be looking to support and partner with WMCC as they continue to grow, providing learning and networking opportunities to the diverse community of Westchester.

Training and Professional Development

Tompkins Learning and Development provides access to internal development classes around communication, management, leadership and personal development. For the year 2022, the average Tompkins employee spent 23 hours on their learning, for a total of more than $440 spent per learner.

As part of our comprehensive learning program, we offer access and funding for conferences, external training opportunities, and education tied to industry certifications for our employees.  We also offer an educational assistance program that provides dollars towards higher education for team members pursuing bachelors and masters level degrees.  Finally, we partner with multiple higher education institutions to offer discounted tuition rates to our own team members, with some programs even extending the discounts to immediate family of our team members. 

One of our more robust learning opportunities is the Tompkins Professional Development Program, which focuses on experiential learning and capstone project work aimed at exposing young talent to key leaders and helping them acquire a deeper understanding of how our company operates.

To ensure future success, custom learning is developed based on specific individual development to create plans for rising leaders in the organization. Overall, Tompkins is committed to making learning accessible to all team members through our access to two learning systems and hundreds of online learning opportunities via courses, videos, articles or podcasts. 

Lastly, we recognize that the success and professional development of our team is directly tied to the communities we serve, so officer appointment requirements include a demonstration of commitment to the community. Individuals being considered for a promotion must demonstrate a commitment to the community through their volunteer participation in internal and/or external community involvement activities.

Compliance Training

100% of our team members participate in a comprehensive training program to ensure our ethics and business practices exceed all regulatory standards.  Although each team member’s quarterly training is tailored to their specific job function, we ensure that all of our employees complete the most important programs.

All employees complete either a fair lending course or a fair treatment course, dependent on job function and day-to-day responsibilities. We also train on unfair, deceptive or abusive acts and practices (UDAAP). This course ensures that all employees understand practices that could be considered unfair, deceptive or abusive.  By ensuring all employees complete these courses, we can be confident that everyone across the organization is delivering a high standard of care to our customers.

Additional training programs completed by all employees include CRA (Community Reinvestment Act), Identity Theft, Protecting Customer Privacy, Handling of Consumer Complaints, and ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act).