Thank you, Redeployment, Fast track recruitment & Business update

Today’s update summarises our key activities and focus to date and gives specific guidance around:

1. Thank you to all colleagues

2. Actions required

• Redeployment of non-operational colleagues and your support for that
• Fast track recruitment and how we need your help

3. Business update

• Operational
• Values in Action

 

Thank you

I want to reiterate my message from yesterday, that we’re all incredibly grateful for the support you are giving to ensure our members and customers still receive the best possible service during difficult times. We know that many of you are working tirelessly to help support others and it’s great to see that this is also being recognised by those we serve.

 

Actions required

1. We have created a team that are assisting the business in redeploying colleagues who are currently performing non- operational roles, into areas of the business who urgently require support. Tarra Simmons is leading this project and we would ask that all colleagues involved give their full support to Tarra and her team in being as flexible as possible with this. Those affected will receive notification later today and tomorrow.

2. We are also really ramping up our efforts at fast track recruitment to ensure we get as many additional people as we can to help us out. These could include for example those currently not working in pubs, clubs, manufacturing or similar. We will set up a dedicated email and phone number for you to let us know of potential new colleagues to do this and we will advise you of that as soon as possible.

 

Business update

3. Clearly there is a lot going on across all Groups! To mention two in particular, we continue to be incredibly busy in our food stores. The depots and supply chain are working flat out to help us get supplies to stores, and we have been receiving additional supplies from our local suppliers. We are looking at necessary measures to follow Government guidelines and have closed our instore cafes to help prevent the gathering of the elderly and vulnerable and to redeploy those colleagues to other areas instore. We have also agreed to increase the centralisation of our travel business and are progressing this today. We’ll let you know more on that tomorrow. 

4. We continue to help support the most vulnerable in our communities and it’s good to see so many people helping neighbours, friends or relatives. We have called for volunteers in the community to help support the foodbanks and distributing products to those who use them.

 

We will; continue to ensure all colleague communication is published on Colleagues Connect – and that’s the single source for you to receive all appropriate communication and Frequently Advised Questions. Similarly, all our customers and members can receive the updates on our website at www.midcounties.coop

As we said at the start, many thanks for your continued hard work and support. This is genuinely appreciated. As always, we welcome your thoughts and feedback, which can be left at the bottom of the page as a comment. 

John Street

Coronavirus Co-ordinator