New Cases, New Systems, and a New Book

To Our Community,

I hope all of you are having a good week and enjoying the crisp fall weather. I have several brief updates for you today.

Vaccine Information Drop-In

For employees with questions or concerns about vaccines, we are holding a vaccine information drop-in session this week. The session is being held from 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. on Friday, October 1, in the Hanover boardroom. At this session, two highly respected local physicians will be on hand to confidentially address any questions or concerns these employees may have. Employees may drop in at their leisure. No one in management will be present, no one will be recording names, and the session is not mandatory.

Budget Instructions

Our fall budgeting process is off and running. Instructions will be going out to all business units later today as we start planning for 2022.

Like last year, this is an open, transparent process. As in prior years, I appreciate the participation of all employees in the process and making their voices heard.

Our new enterprise-level budget and forecasting tool will greatly enhance our ability to do scenario planning and what-if analyses, a tremendous improvement in helping us move forward.

Salary Review

Earlier this month, the leadership team announced a new minimum wage, the first stage of a multiphase approach to modifying our compensation plan. Phase 2 of the plan is to completely change our salary structure to reward employee performance more objectively. The first step is a comprehensive salary review, which we are working on now. We have engaged a third party expert, with specific knowledge on the NH and VT employment markets, to gather and analyze the data. Our HR team expects detailed information early next year.

New Human Resources Software

I am pleased to announce that we will soon be implementing a new enterprise-level suite of HR software, designed to help our employees perform at their full potential. The program will roll out over the next several months and will go live by summer 2022. It will also integrate nicely with our new budget and forecasting tool I mentioned earlier.

Salesforce

Many employees worked together to help roll out Salesforce, our new enterprise-level, feature-rich membership database. The data migration has gone well and the project is moving forward on schedule. This system will also integrate well with our HR and Finance systems.

Cases

Finally, if you have not had the chance to see them yet, please stop by and see the beautiful new cases throughout the Lebanon store. The cases look great and are getting rave reviews. Many departments and employees were involved in making this initiative a reality. In particular, our Facilities team kept the project on track by riding herd on our contractors. Well done, everyone!

Wrap Up

In closing, I have some excellent news. On behalf of our Co-op, I would like to congratulate Melissa K. Scanlan for the publication of her book, Prosperity in the Fossil-Free Economy: Cooperatives and the Design of Sustainable Businesses. Professor Scanlan is the Lynde B. Uihlein Endowed Chair in Water Policy and the Director of the Center for Water Policy at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences.

She is a Professor in the School of Freshwater Sciences and affiliated faculty at University of Wisconsin’s Law School. In 2018 the Co-op awarded her the Gerstenberger Scholarship for her work on the environmental impact of worker cooperatives. This month her new book was released. Learn more about it HERE. This is a wonderful success story to be celebrated.

As always, I would like to thank all of our members and shoppers for all your support. We will talk again next Thursday. In the meantime, 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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