A recent survey has found that co-operatives are more attractive to employees than mainstream private businesses.
Despite representing less than 1% of businesses in the UK, four out of the top 25 graduate employers were co-operatives or mutuals, according to workplace review website The JobCrowd.
What is it about this small group of non-conventional companies that is so attractive to employees?
Fen Frances is a director at Alpha, a communications agency based in Newcastle. Her position is relatively surpising, given that she has only been in the company for a year. But thanks to the co-op structure initiated by the founding partners, graduates take the fast track to full responsibility after just twelve months.
Frances explains: "I was applying for jobs in e-commerce, retail and marketing when I found out that Alpha was a co-op. It actually made me very excited and even a bit nervous for the interview – I really wanted to get the job.
"Friends think it means lots of long meetings as we're all directors, but it's actually really fast making decisions. We all get on."
David Parker, one of two founding directors, introduced a new crop of employees to the company when his business partner retired. "I did consider shutting it down, as we'd founded the co-op together in 1987. But I didn't think it was in the spirit of a co-op," Parker says. "I hired a younger generation of staff, who are now becoming directors. One of the first things the young directors decided on was relocating the office from Durham to Newcastle.
"A lot of them lived here, and we're really pleased with the building they chose. Every month we go out for a lunch in Newcastle to celebrate."
According to Tarra Simmons, head of colleague engagement at The Midcounties Co-operative, it is sometimes easy for employees to forget their co-op privileges. She says: "Five years ago, we found from surveys conducted amongst our 10,000 employees [or "colleagues," as they are known] that we'd really been a victim of our own success. Lots of colleagues stay in the company for their entire careers, and don't realise that other companies don't operate in the same way we do. We wanted to raise the profile of our 'co-op point of difference' within the organisation."
Simmons embarked on an education campaign that saw all new colleagues being taken through the four key principles of The Midcounties Co-operative – "democracy, openness, equality and social responsibility." Internal emails were rebranded, posters in stores had the four principles printed on to them, and the company magazine regularly featured articles about how being organised as a co-operative was of benefit to everyone.
"It's what really makes us different," Simmons says. "Doing the survey again this year, we've seen a huge improvement in levels of employee engagement, and a marked difference in how proud people are of working for The Midcounties Co-operative."
There's also been an economic boon for the co-op, with Simmons claiming that colleagues could earn more money in other similar retailers, but choose to stay where they are. Simmons herself has been loyal to the company since she started as a 17-year-old till operator.
"They asked me whether I thought it was worth going on to university – when I could stay here and be offered a career – with opportunities for variety in retail, finance and services. Twenty-six years later, I think I made the right decision!"
Simmons notes that many people stay with the company for 20 or 25 years. "Actually, we're going out with a colleague after work who has just celebrated his 20th year in the company," she says.
Communicating the successes and failures of the business is a core part of what The Midcounties Co-operative seeks to do. "In the last month we've grown to a billion-pound business," explains Simmons. "And it's great that we can celebrate this with all our colleagues. But in the past where there have been downtimes we have stuck to being transparent. Everyone has the right to know how we're really doing," she adds.
Ed Mayo, secretary general of Co-operatives UK, the UK trade association for co-operatives, said: "We've seen that tribes are very important in the consumer world, and it's the same in the workplace. The workplace is fundamental to our lives.
He adds: "It's not for everybody because they do demand responsibility from the employees. You have to be very careful with who you recruit into your organisation, but you don't see the same churn and flow that you do in other companies, co-ops tend to keep people for far longer."
Mayo concludes that "recruiting graduates is a social responsibility", and it's reassuring to see that co-operatives are offering an increasingly attractive proposition for new entrants to the employment market.
Posted by Alastair Sloan
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