December Board Blog

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written by Maggie Jones, Board Member

Greetings members, your board is going to be updating you monthly via a new board blog. This will be a synopsis of the month’s board meeting and will also include any other board related member information.

Your board works on overseeing our General Manager (GM), ensuring financial viability, providing governance that is in line with the BC Coops Act, and making strategic decisions that benefit our Co-op. We have five board committees that meet monthly and then share reports and recommendations to the board as a whole. These committees are: HR/Hiring, Governance, Finance, Member Engagement, and Nominations. We also hear reports monthly from our GM.

December 2022

Your board met on December 19th for our regular board meeting.

We heard and discussed reports from board committees:

  • We have been working on hiring a new General Manager for the Co-op. Your board’s Hiring Committee has been busy vetting and interviewing candidates for this role.
  • Your board’s Governance Committee is working toward a strategic planning session that we will hold in the new year. At this session we will review current and updated Strategic Plans and discuss how we can ensure the ongoing health and profitability of our Co-op in a changing economic environment.
  • Your board’s Member Engagement committee has developed a new protocol for responding to members emails and feedback which should streamline the process.

Our Interim General Managers (IGMs) continue to oversee and review our daily operations to ensure that we are providing the members with the best shopping experience. They provide operational updates at our monthly board meetings. This month their report included:

  • An update on hiring a new loss prevention officer. Because your board is responsible for the financial well-being of our Co-op, we were pleased to hear that a new person has been hired and has started this role. Our IGMs shared that theft in the grocery industry has increased and the new loss prevention officer will take a weight off of floor staff. They are pleased to have a great person in this role.
  • Our IGMs informed us that they would not be holding a staff Christmas party this year due to high illness rates amongst staff. Instead, staff received a beautiful locally made toque and a gift card.
  • We learnt that the patronage rebate should be applied to members accounts after Christmas.
  • The board is aware that the living wage continues to climb and we are working with our IGMs for ways to ensure that our employees get all the support that we can give.

Starting in the new year the board will have a presentation from one department manager each month to help us understand and stay current with departmental matters.