Society Steering Wheel Re-launch

As a co-operative, we believe there is more to being a successful business than just profits. So, as well as measuring our financial performance, we use our Society Steering Wheel to measure our performance in the key areas of co-operation, people, customers and delivery.

Why the re-launch? 

During the coronavirus pandemic our group and site-level Society Steering Wheel reporting has been on hold since period 2 this year, with a:

• major Society focus over this time on supporting the effective operations of our core businesses

• particular focus on ensuring our Food Stores continued to provide products to our members and customers

Following a Society Steering Wheel review with the Executive, we will commence the re-issuing of the Group and site-level Society Steering Wheel reporting again from period 6, aiming to re-engage colleagues with the Society Steering Wheel and drive behaviours to achieve these targets.

We have reviewed the potential effects of the lockdown period on our Society Steering Wheel measures and taken action where necessary to re-focus our measures and targets accordingly.

Take our colleague community volunteering measure as an example, due to lockdown the traditional type of colleague volunteering support in the community has been limited.  However, our colleagues have been providing valuable community volunteering activity through our home delivery service.  Through this service our colleagues have completed almost 14,000 community volunteering hours supporting vulnerable members of the community, these hours have therefore been included within our Society Steering Wheel measure. 

Moving forward all colleagues involved in the home delivery service are encouraged to log their volunteering hours through the Colleagues Connect volunteering portal in the usual way, and we are removing the 22.5 hours per annum limit on volunteering for these colleagues to enable us to capture the great work our colleagues are doing in the community through this service. For more information on logging your hours please see here.

How this affects colleagues and the Society

Colleagues will now see the Society Steering Wheel being published for Society, Groups and Sites every period from Period 6 onwards. 

What can you do?

The call to action for all colleagues is to drive behaviours to support the achievement of our Society Steering Wheel measures over the second half of this year.  All colleagues can make a real difference in helping us achieve our Society Steering wheel measures and make some significant positive impacts.  Actions like reducing waste and saving energy in the workplace, providing innovative ideas and promoting member trade all help towards our targets. 

Through our Society Steering Wheel we are making a range of positive impacts, for example through our carrier bag reduction measure progress we are reducing 3 million plastic carrier bags per year, and last year thanks to the support of colleagues from across our business we enabled over 31,000 compliments from customers to be achieved.  

Please continue to do your bit in helping us achieve these targets whether it be supporting your Society Steering Wheel champions in the reporting process or driving behaviours at your sites to make a positive difference.