GM Paul Guidone

Introducing the New Co-op Compensation Plan

To Our Community,

Over the past several months, I have been updating you on our compensation plan review project—a comprehensive approach to ensuring a current, market-relevant compensation structure at the Co-op. Today I am pleased to share some results and next steps in this journey.

As you may recall, beginning last fall, our HR team hired third-party compensation consultants to gather data on the Vermont and New Hampshire markets.

The leadership team’s goal was to create a new compensation plan that would reward employee performance based on objective, independent, industry-based market data.

Our consultants gathered vast amounts of data and presented it to our HR team for a systematic review. The review was undertaken slowly and methodically to ensure that each job at the Co-op, at every pay grade, was appropriately matched to the industry data. Once our HR team was satisfied that this was the case, the data were summarized and presented to me and the leadership team.

From there, we began the intensive, detailed process of ascertaining how our employees’ positions and pay rates compared to the recommendations put forth by our consultants. To put it another way: Were the wages for a particular job at the Co-op below the minimum, at the mid-point, or above the maximum for that job based on the independent, industry-based market data we received?

This part of the process was critical in order for the leadership team to be assured the revised compensation plan would attain its goal. After much additional analyses and discussion, we are now able to determine how and where adjustments to our compensation plan will need to be made.

The end result is this:

  1. The Co-op has a brand-new compensation structure based on up-to-date, objective, industry-based market data.
  2. The revised plan is at least as advantageous as what our consultants recommended, and in several isolated instances a bit more advantageous.
  3. We are now in the process of determining what salary adjustments will need to be made to achieve our goal.
  4. Any salaries that will be affected are only going to go up—not down.
  5. Any adjustments that will be made will take effect at the beginning of the first pay period in July.

I am excited about the results of this project. This process review and revision was comprehensive, impartial, and market driven.

You will be hearing more about these adjustments between now and the beginning of July. In the meantime, I would like to thank my team for all the hard work to make this happen, and our HR team for working with our consultants and keeping the project on schedule.

By now, no one should be surprised when I say plenty of work lies ahead, as the leadership team works to determine the best ways to absorb the costs for these adjustments. But make no mistake, increased costs notwithstanding, updating the structure of our compensation plan is the right thing to do.

Wrap Up

As always, I would like to thank all of our members and shoppers for the ongoing support. We will talk again next Thursday. Remember to be kind to one another and to yourselves, and we look forward to serving you in our stores and at the curbside.

Onward and upward,
Paul

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Paul Guidone

Paul Guidone, CFA, spent the better part of four decades in the investment management business here and abroad. He held positions ranging from analyst through Deputy Chairman and Group CEO, at organizations such as Citigroup (US) and The HSBC Group (London and Hong Kong). He joined the Co-op in 2016 as the CFO and in 2018 became Strategic Advisor to the General Manager. Paul was appointed by the Co-op Board as interim General Manager in March 2020 and General Manager in September 2020. To contact, email PGuidone@coopfoodstore.com.

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