New Websites, Your Co-op & Membership 2025

New Websites & Your Co-op 

Earlier this week we saw the launch of both the new Your Co-op website and Careers website.  I thought they looked great and really give us something to build on for the future, well done to everyone involved.

You may have noticed that the sites are branded “Your Co-op” which is part of our journey to rebrand the Society and its trading groups, gradually replacing the national brand which was abandoned by the Co-op Group in 2016 and sees us adopting the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) ‘Co-op’ marque as part of our logos, which was agreed by the Board in 2017.

Our legal entity name is still The Midcounties Co-operative, as these changes relate to our customer-facing logo’s. We have been increasingly using the ICA Coop marque across our businesses and this latest change to our websites and social media sites will start to bring together this recognisable brand in a more consistent way.    

Your Colleague Pulse Survey

Today we opened a new colleague pulse survey. These surveys help us gain feedback regularly and enable us to understand any changes to colleagues’ views over time. The survey is only 6 questions, so quick and easy to complete and to ensure that we have a broader range of colleagues view as possible I would encourage you to take the opportunity to have your say. 

You can complete this round’s pulse survey here. 

Membership 2025 

We want to make sure that everything we do at Midcounties Co-operative reflects member feedback and have teamed up with Go MAD Thinking & Schelling Point to understand the views of members around the topic title of: “Determining how Midcounties Co-op provides maximum value to its members in 2025."

This is to aid the board in their thinking as part of a Board Strategy Day on 21st September, where we will provide them with research and insight on the Society’s long term member engagement strategy.

To do this we are planning to trial “alignment cycle” software & methodology to gain this feedback and understand the alignment of the various stakeholder groups and individuals around the current membership strategy and possible enhancements or changes.

This is a different process to a traditional survey and uses Augmented Intelligence (A.I.) software to generate results and will involve representation from 4 groups, including the Board, Young Members Network, a representative group of members and we will be asking some selected colleagues to take part.

The process will work in 5 main stages as follows:

1. Gathering opinions: participants share opinions on the topic

2. Alignment: Participants receive ALL opinions (anonymously) plus some directional statements and score their level of agreement/ disagreement 

3. Convergence: Participants receive individual results and have the chance to provide any reasons for misalignment

4. Analytics generation: Results are generated using the A.I. software

5. Alignment: A core team will review the alignment results and prepare the Board paper for presentation in September

Half Yearly Meetings – Save the date

This year, much like the AGM, we will be doing things slightly differently for the Half-Yearly Meetings! 

We will be holding two meetings, one on Tuesday 6th and the other on Tuesday 13th October. Further details will be provided as plans develop; however, it would be great if you could join us and so please put the date(s) in your diary.

As always, let me have your thoughts by commenting below.