Your Society, your thoughts, your vision
A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of working with our Jersey and Guernsey Members on the future direction of the Society.
Every business needs a compass and your Society’s management team have spent many months examining the long term trends that will influence the future choices we must make. However, as a co-operative society, it’s equally important for us to know what you want too!
The Member Engagement Sessions gave us an opportunity to work with our members to help tackle some big topics. We asked them to tell us their views and visions of our future store environment. The discussion covered topics including the in-store experience and technology, as well as the future of our broader Society.
Over two nights (one in Jersey, one in Guernsey), I was amazed by the level of passion that clearly exists for our community owned brand. It was nice to hear opinions from members that attended, they had clearly given our business a lot of thought!
Our members worked together in groups to brainstorm their ideas for the future.
Here are some of the common themes that consistently emerged:
• We should publicise our community activity more overtly
<br
• We should provide an alternative to stamps for bonus dividend
<br
• We should consider simplifying our brand identity
<br
• We should provide qualifications and scholarships for our young employees
<br
• We should consider developing an app for member accounts, promotions and recipe ideas
<br
• Many members feel that Buy one, get one free deals are wasteful and they would prefer discounted prices instead
These thoughts, along with many others from the meetings are currently being digested by our team and later this month we will be taking this ‘vision for our future’ to your Board of Directors.
The feedback from these events has been fantastic and I would like to thank all those who attended and took the time and effort to contribute so fully.
If you are a member of the co-op - this is your business. You should always feel free to get in contact with me if you have any suggestions on how we can evolve to strengthen your Society in the future, I welcome your views.
CM