Coronavirus Update - Colleague reward and Protecting Colleagues & Customers

 

Colleague Reward

I am pleased to advise you of some additional measures and rewards the Society has put in place as a thank you to you, our colleagues for a minimum of 4 weeks.

• As from Monday, all of us will get an enhanced colleague discount of 20% in all food stores.

 

In addition to that, we want to give further reward to our customer-facing front-line colleagues at this time, in recognition of the essential roles they are undertaking in daily contact with customers.

A detailed brief will be part of News at One on Monday and also communicated via the COO’s but I want to share the top line news today. 

• For the next 4 weeks, all customer-facing front line colleagues will receive a 10% bonus on the base rate of pay for hours actually worked from the start of next week.

• Any customer-facing front line colleague that currently has a child in our nursery, will receive enhanced discount from 30% to 50% again from Monday.

• All food and post office front line colleagues will receive a meal deal on each day they are working.  

• Funeral and healthcare colleagues will be able to claim back the equivalent of the cost of a meal deal £3.50 on the days they are working in front line operations.

• Childcare colleagues can get lunch through the nursery kitchen on the days they are at work.   

• We have also made arrangements with Creed for Childcare colleagues to receive food delivery parcels. Whilst these will be charged for, it does provide a shopping service for those colleagues who are at work in nurseries.

All of these arrangements will be in place for the next 4 weeks at which point we will review the current situation.

 

Phil Ponsonby

Group Chief Executive Officer

 

 Protecting our colleagues & customers

 

John Street - Coronavirus Co-ordinator

 

Personal protection equipment measures:

Our priority is and will remain the protection and welfare of colleagues and we are doing everything we can to ensure we continue to have appropriate supplies of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for colleagues who need them. We have many supplies that have now been delivered to sites, with more stock of gloves and facemasks arriving daily.

I am also pleased to confirm that the first of the protective screens have been installed as shown below.  These will continue to be rolled out across all stores in the coming days.

 

-Social distancing:

This is one of the most important areas for all of us. We have given guidance to each trading site on this already and many measures have now been taken and implemented. These actions include

• Limiting the number of customers at any one time in food depending upon the size of the store and taking similar measures in funeral and pharmacy branches.

• Displaying point of sale to encourage customers to keep their distance in queues or walking around stores.

• Encouraging the use of cashless payments wherever possible and the contactless limit will be increased to £45 from 1st April, with no limit already on Apple Pay. 

• Driving telephone contact rather than face-to-face across our Travel and Funeral groups.

• Actioned temporary closures for a limited time during the day in Pharmacy and some food sites to enable shelf-filling and cleaning whilst maintaining distance.

 

- Cleaning:

As you know, we have increased cleaning depth and frequency across all our sites, and we are continually checking for further Government advice and guidelines. We’ve allocated out further supplies of both cleaning materials as well as 5-litre hand sanitiser and trading sites will receive additional quantities of this today, with further quantities on their way each week. These can be decanted to be used throughout each site. We are relaxing our position on disposable cups currently to ensure that there is no risk from colleagues using the same cup. Our Childcare Group is implementing a new type of mist cleaning in their most vulnerable NHS nurseries to ensure the very best protection for the children and our colleagues. Again, we’ll communicate specific details to colleagues in each group over the coming couple of days.

Can I ask that every one of us knows what the measures are for the Group or site they are currently working in, recognising that many of us are working in a different group at present to our normal one.

We’re also continually reviewing what else we can do to help protect everyone. That includes our procurement team working hard to source materials from both existing and new sources. We’ll continue to focus on this and to make sure you are aware of the latest actions being taken.

 

Earth Hour

Just a reminder that this evening between 8.30 and 9.30 is Earth Hour, a global lights out event where millions will take symbolic action to join together in inspiring hope for the future. You can find more about it here. 

 

Mental Health

We want to ensure we are doing everything we can to help you at this time and to help look after your mental health.  In the Coronavirus updates section on colleagues connect you will find Some hints and tips, advice from our partner Grocery Aid, and in case you missed it we’ve had a great message from Paul, at Springfield Mind – thanking us for everything we’ve done in the community, and giving some great hints and tips for mental wellbeing at this time.  You can access the information and video in the Wellbeing tips for Coronavirus dropdown box here.

 

Thumbs Up - #TeamMC

We know that you are doing an incredible job, going above and beyond to help our members, customers and fellow colleagues, whilst adapting to this ever-changing and challenging time. We continue to be grateful for all you’re doing.

We’ve had a great response to the call so far, sharing your messages and Thumbs Up, celebrating #TeamMC so please keep them coming in.  Check out the latest messages here.