Sara Coppersmith

The last few weeks have been busy for Sara Coppersmith. In March, she was promoted, becoming the Teller Supervisor at our Union Grove branch. And this week, she started sponsoring her first employee.

Now Sara is both learning her own new duties and helping new tellers with theirs. That will keep her on her toes.

“It’s challenging making sure you teach a new employee everything you want them to know,” she says. “It’s easy to forget small things that make a big difference.”

Though Sara has been a sponsor since November, this is the first chance she has had to try out her knowledge on a new hire. Fortunately, she reports that it’s going well.

“It’s very rewarding, because you are pretty much the new employee’s introduction to the bank,” she says. “You get to make someone comfortable on their first day, when they might be worrying about their new job and the people they’re going to work with. You get to start them off on the right foot.”

And it isn’t just a valuable experience for the new employee, Sara notes — it’s good for the sponsor, too.

“Typically, I’m a shy, quieter person until I get to know someone. But if you’re training someone, you really can’t be that type of person,” she says. “You need to be pretty confident and outgoing.”

Sara agreed to become a sponsor after her Branch Manager, Lisa Brooks, asked if she’d consider it.

“I asked Sara because she had shown a real initiative in trying to help her co-workers, and she is really good at explaining things. She’s always looking for the right answer, whether she finds it on her own or finds the right person to ask,” Lisa says. “Plus, she’s got a great personality — she’s very warm, very funny. I thought that brand-new employees coming in would be able to connect with her.”

The timing was just right, too. Sara’s predecessor in her new position, Michelle Miller, recently left Union Grove to work at our Corporate office. If not for Sara, that would have left the branch without a sponsor.

“I’m glad I did it,” says Sara. “I’m hoping to learn more about how to train people.”