Phil's Blog - My first day as Group CEO

Hello. Today is my very first day as your new Group Chief Executive, so I thought I’d share a few thoughts with you.

Firstly can I say how much I’m privileged to have been appointed into this role. I’m really excited about working with our Board of Directors in leading this great organisation onto the next phase.

It’s hard to imagine how much this business has grown since it was first formed back in 2005 as the Midcounties Co-operative. We’re now the UK’s largest independent Co-operative society, with a £1.5 billion turnover, nearly 9,000 colleagues and we’re owned by over 600,000 members.

At this stage I’d like to pay tribute to our outgoing Group Chief Executive, Ben Reid, who has worked tirelessly to lead this organisation to the business it is today.

We have unique co-operative businesses in Energy, Childcare, online doctor in Pharmacy, we’re the UK’s largest independent travel operator and we play a leading role across the co-operative movement in Funeral and Food retail.

It’s a complex business and with that we have many challenges, but we also have some exciting opportunities. One of the things I want to do is connect our businesses together in a way that we’ve never done it before, to bring real value to our members. This is part of what I’m calling our Connected Future. It’s not just about how we connect our businesses, it’s also about how we connect with our members, our communities, our business partners, and importantly how we connect with you, our colleagues. That starts today with the launch of a brand new website dedicated to you called Colleague Connect. It’s an open website which means you’ll be able to access it at any time, from anywhere and on any device. It will give you useful information on policies and procedures, and also give you news and the latest information about all the exciting developments going on within the organisation.

I’m going to be out and about in the next few months and I hope to meet as many of you as possible, so if you do see me please take the time to talk to me and tell me what you think about Colleague Connect and anything else you want to discuss at that time. In the meantime thanks for your support and I hope to see you soon.