After last week’s interview with Steve Murrells you asked for more questions to be answered. So that’s what we’ve done. We sat down with Steve this morning and put seven more of your questions.
The latest Q&A covers pay, hours, work/life balance, local causes, Digital progress, and Insurance delays.
And if you like this, we’ll do it again soon.
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Why aren’t colleagues being paid for all the hours we work? I work in a food store and myself and others are tired of working so much overtime trying to get everything done to see on our wageslips that we aren’t even being paid for it. I’m missing atleast 10 hours every month and managers lose even more. Cutting hours was bad and taking away double discount hit harder but refusing to pay us for the work we do is insulting and beyond ridiculous. We’ve already lost so many members of staff in the last 24 months and now a lot more are looking elsewhere. It’s hard to keep morale up when staff dread seeing their wages!
In a future Q and A session could you please ask if Steve knows (or can look into) why the Co-op supermarket in Ashtead, Surrey refuses to accept the Co-op membership card. The till staff say that they are a franchise and the manager has told them not to accept it, but the till receipt has in bold at the top the Co-op Manchester details, not the name and address of any franchise holder. Is this right? From the till receipt it looks like my ‘sale contract’ is with the main Co-op. The Co-op website and intranet sites say the card is accepted for Co-op food – there are no restrictions quoted. Thank you.
Chris. This store is a Southern Co-op franchise. For context, the Co-op Group sold our franchise business to Southern Co-op many years ago. However, they continued to use our till systems – though these should all be swapped over to Southern’s systems by the end of this year. However, the team are following up on why it shows our Manchester address at the top of the till receipt as that shouldn’t be the case. While our Membership T&Cs do include The Southern Co-op as one of the independent societies where we can use our card, it does’t mention anything about their franchises. I’ve asked for clarity on that point and will update when I get it. Thanks, Kevin
Why are the people in both logistics and warehouse all left out, we play a bit part in making sure that the basket shopper is happy with their experiences in the store’s. But all we ever seem to here is the cut back and redundancy it seems were like the little invisible workers in all things like this are left out. Most RDC & NDC employees number 1000 but a shop with less that 20 collages make the new. Come on Steve give us some praise once in a while.
Hi Liam, I don’t think it was on purpose that there wern’t any questions from logistics. The questions put forward from the hundreds we got were trying to be representative of those colleagues who’d submitted them. As Steve was the CEO of the Food Business he certainly knows the role you play in making sure that members and customers can get what they popped in for. ^Kevin
For those of us already on more than the living wage should we expect our pay to stay as far ahead of minimum wage as it is now?
Charles, thanks for the question… we’ll add that to our list to consider for the next session. ^Kevin
Why do the coop still selling the sun
Hi Chris. We do provide choice for our members and customers and love it or hate it, many customers still buy it along with their other items. If we did;t sell it, then they;d go elsewhere for everything. However, you might like to read Nick croft’s thoughts on our advertising which, while doen’t directly address your question about selling the Sun, it does cover some of our thinking around advertising in general: https://blog.coop.co.uk/2017/03/23/an-update-on-our-advertising-policy/ ^Kevin
I think this is a good idea, it will help to keep in touch with what is happening behind the scenes,what I want to know is where can you put a question forward?
Hi Clifford. The call out to ask questions was on the intranet and Colleague Facebook last week… but all comments on here, the intranet and Colleague Facebook are being collated and considered. Obviously we can’t answer all of them directly, but we’re trying to get a feel for the most common ones and tackling those first. ^Kevin