Protecting our colleagues & Investments in Food & Childcare
This article will take approximately 3 minutes to read
Published 23 Feb 2024 in Phil's blog
Network Outage
I wanted to start by apologising to all of you for the communications network outage that has affected all sites over the last two days. All sites were affected for half an hour on Thursday, with 51 sites continuing to be down throughout that day and then all sites for an hour this morning. I understand how extremely frustrating this is for you not to be able to fully serve our customers and members or complete the many tasks you have which rely on this connectivity and I want to thank you for your patience. I also want you to know how extremely seriously we are taking these issues and that our IT team will be carrying out a full investigation.
The outage appears to have been triggered by an issue with our core network switches at our data centre that occurred yesterday. When bringing back online the 51 sites that were still having issues this morning, our backup and primary network data switches unexpectedly swapped over. The system operates with two switches that run in parallel and in the event of an emergency all connectivity transfers from one to another. We will need to carry out a full technical investigation to understand why this was triggered as it should not have happened while bringing the 51 sites back online. In addition to a full investigation into this incident, I’ve asked Jacob Isherwood, our Chief Information Officer, to look at where we can improve our resilience and business continuity planning. I will provide an update in March when I hear more. In the meantime, whilst the system now appears to be stable, you have my assurance that the Executive and IT teams will be monitoring this over the weekend and will be on hand to update you should any other issues materialise.
Write to your MP - Retail Workers Amendment
As mentioned in my blog previously, we have been strongly campaigning on the protection of our colleagues and since the beginning of last year, we have been working very closely with the Police Crime Commissioner for the West Midlands and Thames Valley Police to prioritise this ongoing issue. However now, as MPs prepare to debate the amendment, it’s the opportunity for change.
Uniting together with other cooperatives including Co-op Group to advocate for a crucial amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill. This amendment would make assaulting a shopworker a distinct offence, providing them with much-needed legal protection.
A pivotal step in combatting retail crime, currently assaulting shopworkers is only considered aggravated assault. This change would categorise any assault against a shopworker as a distinct offence, facilitating easier investigation, prosecution, and harsher sentencing – potentially up to a year in prison. A change that will not only benefit our colleagues but could also fundamentally improve the legal protection afforded to all shopworkers across the sector.
With over 5,000 letters already sent to MP’s since the campaign began, last week we wrote to members to help amplify our message and urge MPs to endorse this bill. Together, through cooperation, we hope to make meaningful changes to safeguard shopworkers nationwide. Please join us in this effort and encourage your fellow colleagues to do the same by writing to your MP here.
Local Food Supplier Conference
Sharing our local food sourcing growth strategy, last week the Senior Food & Local teams hosted a bespoke supplier event at Cotswolds Farm Park. Providing a brilliant opportunity to thank our suppliers for their past and ongoing support, it was also a networking event for suppliers to sample delicious local produce and share best practices with each other.
With like-for-like sales in 2023 totalling £14m, the main drivers for local last year were fruit from Worcestershire-based Mudwalls Farm and eggs driven by Gloucestershire-based Cacklebean, regarded as best in class with welfare and quality, packaging and all-year-round availability. Let’s see what 2024 holds!
Aside from sales, our local suppliers make a vital contribution by doing good together within our communities. Whether that’s through sustainability, ethical practices or local jobs, they help local farmers, growers, butchers, bakers and producers; whilst championing sustainability, education and health. Take a look at the highlights of the day…
Food and Childcare investments – Apley Food and Stonehouse Nursery
Staying on the topic of Food, next week sees the launch of our first food store investment of the year in Apley, Telford. Enhancing our estate in Shropshire to 13 stores, the £605k investment is very unique. The site incorporates two of our trading areas, the Apley Food store as well as a brand new Little Pioneers nursery, opening later this year. A great example of cross-trade, well done to the launch and property teams involved and good luck to Store Manager, Denis Bell-Blake and our new colleagues.
Inspecting the brand-new Apley site with senior team members of the Retail and Property
Next to Apley Food, will be Little Pioneers Nursery, Apley. To be completed later this year
The Stonehouse Nursery rebrand
Over in Childcare, you may have read our update plans for 2024 along with the rebrand of Stonehouse Nursery in Birmingham. Exciting plans for us this year, watch the drone footage of the newly reformatted nursery as it opens to our little pioneers. Across the estate, we also finally announce the long-awaited Ofsted registration of Oxford Station and Co-op House, Warwick Nursery. With the latter opening on 4 March.
Once again, well done to all the colleagues involved in the rebrand, investments and Ofsted registrations. I look forward to visiting and will report back on our future nursery launches later this year.
Our Steering wheel and how colleagues make a difference
As well as measuring our financial progress, our Society Steering Wheel also monitors our progress on non-financial fronts. Over the last year thanks to the dedication and hard work of our colleagues we have achieved year-on-year improvements against the vast majority of these measures, outlining our best performance for a number of years.
Notable achievements include reaching the highest level of member trade in several years, recruiting over 100,000 new members, saving over 5 million kWh of electricity through energy efficiency initiatives across comparable sites, and boosting overall colleague satisfaction to 79, up from 74 in 2021.
We've now set our sights on our steering wheel targets for 2024/25. Watch how our colleagues make a difference as well as this year’s targets in our update here.
Remembering former President and Board Director, Doreen Shaw
Finally, I would like to mention I attended the funeral service of former president and Board Director, Doreen Shaw. Doreen was just two months shy of getting to 100 years old! She served as a director for the Society and its predecessors for 40 years from 1971 to 2011 – a formidable achievement. As well as being a leading director, she was a real champion for colleagues and a great advocate and supporter of helping women achieve their goals and ambitions; and, of course, her commitment to co-operation was second to none. When she retired from the Board, we saw fit to name the Board room at Co-operative House the ‘Doreen Shaw’ room to honour and recognise her dedication to the Society.
Enjoyed this week's blog? Why not give it a 'Heart' above or leave Phil a comment below.