Our Connected Future

Hello everyone and welcome back. This blog brings you an overview of diversity and inclusion and an update from our leadership day, with the focus of the day on our connected future.

Diversity and inclusion

Diversity and inclusion are at the heart of our Society values and they enable a diverse range of people to work together effectively. Diversity is not only about treating everyone equally, but taking their differences into account appropriately. It forms the foundation of inclusion; an environment in which everyone feels valued, that their contribution matters and that they are able to perform to their potential, no matter their background, identity or circumstances. 

We now want to build on the work already done and look at how we communicate awareness in areas such as diversity and inclusion, wellbeing and engagement. On 11th October we are hosting our very first Diversity and Inclusion day at the Ramada Hotel in Solihull. We are inviting 50 colleagues from across the Society to get invovled and help shape a new Diversity and Inclusion Strategy. We want to ensure your voice is heard and we welcome anyone to get involved; so if you think you can help, then please get in touch with our Society Engagement Manager, Rebekah Brain.  

Leadership Day

Tuesday brought me to the Chateau Impney for a Leadership Day. The morning presentations were on ‘Our Connected Future’ with each presentation focusing on a different strand: Members, Communities, Partners, Businesses and Colleagues. My vision is for us to deliver our connected future, and although we have a diverse set of trading groups, Midcounties is one entity and it is imperative that we connect our businesses to unlock their true value. 

In the afternoon we separated into groups and our Leadership team discussed potential Brexit outcomes, in particular stock availability in both Food and Healthcare and we considered solutions for this. Britain’s road to Brexit has not been clear and with the countdown on until the official departure date, we are working hard to prepare our business for whatever happens next. 

Paul Thompson from MIND

We ended the day with a very inspirational guest speaker, Paul Thompson, from Springfield Mind. He spoke about his own experience as he raised awareness of mental health issues in the workplace. 25 members of our Leadership team have already completed Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) training, delivered by MIND. The rest of our Leadership team will follow and we are looking to provide the full two day course to all of our HR advisors. This is all part of increasing awareness of mental health and colleague wellbeing throughout the Society.  

Kronos auto-scheduler

This week saw the start of a significant change process in our Food Group with the launch of Kronos auto-scheduler in our Supermarkets at Wem and Stourport. In order to deliver the best possible customer experience it is vital that we have the right number of colleagues working at the right time. The auto scheduler system has been carefully developed to ensure that it captures the customer needs and individual tasks of each store, but also contains the operational practices and policies that are in place across the whole store estate.

Significant testing and review has been undertaken on the system to ensure that we are now ready to go and help stores to improve our customer experience and help our Food business to continue to grow. The introduction of this system will inevitably lead to changes in working arrangements for some colleagues and this can be unsettling. Let’s all make sure we appreciate that and help to make the process as smooth as possible over the coming months.

Keep telling me what you think 

I want to understand what matters to you as colleagues of Midcounties. The comments section below is a great opportunity for me to get your feedback, so don’t be shy to express your opinions and share your views with me. I look forward to bringing you another blog next week.