Union Savings Bank’s Jeff McDonough on improving community relations

Jeff McDonough became the new executive vice president of human resources and community relations at Danbury’s Union Savings Bank on April 14. McDonough, who joined Union Savings in 2016 as senior vice president, will also join the bank’s executive management committee and continue serving as a member of the bank’s management council.

McDonough, who was vice president of human resources at Health Quest prior to joining the bank, said he was particularly excited to continue his work with the Union Savings Bank Foundation, which has recently reevaluated its approach to best serving the community.

“The pandemic caused us to pivot a little bit in terms of how we are operating the foundation,” McDonough said. “We have an annual grant process that used to take place in the middle of the year with grant awards taking place towards the end of the year. During the pandemic we quickly realized that there were a lot of our community partners struggling, so what we did was accelerate the foundation grant process, so we moved it up a year or so.

“We’re actually in the middle of our grant process right now, which ended May 1,”. “The idea is that we can get this money to our community partners much earlier to support them in their efforts and the various areas that they support the community and their clients.”

McDonough indicated that the foundation has continued to provide support throughout Fairfield County and in the sections of Litchfield County where Union Savings has branch locations. In addition to restructuring the schedule and process to better fit the present needs of community organizations, McDonough said he has overseen an effort to give fewer but larger grants through the foundation.

“In the last several years, we have been focusing on trying to give more meaningful awards to organizations to really have more of an impact on what they’re doing,” McDonough explained. “The awards we give out are more substantial than they’ve been in the past to individual organizations because we just felt like when we see a grant application coming in, we would really rather look at the grant holistically and see how it is going to impact the entire organization.”

The result, McDonough said, was the foundation is “probably giving out fewer grants to fewer organizations each year, but with larger awards given to those organizations so we can make a more meaningful impact.”

In addition to the grants through the foundation, McDonough was also proud of the Union Savings Bank Teachers’ Closet, a program that provides teachers with free school supplies for use in classrooms or to outfit their students. The latest evolution includes a “mobile closet,” which brings a van with the supplies directly to the schools.

“We had the teachers come to where we brought the van with what they had put on their wish list and we literally fulfilled their wish lists right in front of them. Very convenient for them, and the teachers really appreciate it,” said McDonough.

McDonough stated he was also dedicated to ensuring that Union Savings Bank’s employees are fully integrated and trained through a series of programs he implemented. He was particularly excited about a 12-month program where employees are given the chance to work for a brief time in different sections of the company. At the end of that period, they sit down with a manager and discuss where they will fit best both for themselves and for the sake of the bank. According to McDonough, this program has produced excellent results, even compared to traditional management programs.

Human resources were McDonough’s career passion since he was pursuing a business degree at State University of New York College at Oswego, and he started in the field immediately after graduating.

“I would say that probably within the first 30 days I decided this was my calling,” he said. “Most people would like to live in a black and white world where everything’s very clear and regimented, very methodical, but when you work in HR the entire world is gray and your entire day is gray. I actually enjoyed that aspect of it. There’s always a different challenge and always an opportunity to provide support and guidance to people in the organization.”