Co-operative Group
An 'altogether different' approach to recruitment
You may know the Co-operative Group as a food retailer; we're also the UK's largest independent travel agent, a funeral director, a pharmacist, a bank and more. But the real difference lies not just in what we do - it's what we are. A co-operative. It's an altogether different business model. Unlike a plc we are owned and controlled by the people who trade with us, our members. But that doesn't mean we're any less commercially ambitious.
Striking the balance between operating in fiercely competitive markets whilst responding to our members needs and fulfilling our social goals is incredibly challenging. Over the last five years we have found that experienced graduates have been very successful in this unique, diverse and challenging environment and have delivered a great deal of added value to our business.
Experienced graduates have joined us from all walks of life including an Olypmic athlete who pursued a commercial career after his sporting career, a teacher looking for a different career path, a consultant who had worked with the Group and discovered a strong affinity for our values and way of doing business and an experienced member of our operations team who decided to study for his degree alongside working in store.
Based on our experience of working with these graduates we have observed a number of key benefits for our business. These include:
One of the key mechanisms that allowed us to implement these changes was extensive consultation with the business, enabling buy in to the new processes. This came to life in senior design consultation, an extensive business project team and briefings for every manager involved in the process. And this is probably the biggest learning for us along the way, letting our managers challenge and ask questions at every step of the way is what has let us make these changes.
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An 'altogether different' approach to recruitment
You may know the Co-operative Group as a food retailer; we're also the UK's largest independent travel agent, a funeral director, a pharmacist, a bank and more. But the real difference lies not just in what we do - it's what we are. A co-operative. It's an altogether different business model. Unlike a plc we are owned and controlled by the people who trade with us, our members. But that doesn't mean we're any less commercially ambitious.
Striking the balance between operating in fiercely competitive markets whilst responding to our members needs and fulfilling our social goals is incredibly challenging. Over the last five years we have found that experienced graduates have been very successful in this unique, diverse and challenging environment and have delivered a great deal of added value to our business.
Experienced graduates have joined us from all walks of life including an Olypmic athlete who pursued a commercial career after his sporting career, a teacher looking for a different career path, a consultant who had worked with the Group and discovered a strong affinity for our values and way of doing business and an experienced member of our operations team who decided to study for his degree alongside working in store.
Based on our experience of working with these graduates we have observed a number of key benefits for our business. These include:
- Increased speed to learn - As experienced graduates are accustomed to the commercial as opposed to the academic environment
- Self development - Greater maturity, self awareness and ownership of personal development allow experienced graduates to shift from academic to professional learning / self-development more quickly
- Tenacity - Experienced graduates are more comfortable making things happen as opposed to waiting for or seeking out support
- Diplomacy - Experienced graduates can cope with the personal challenges and organisational diplomacy required in a much more appropriate fashion
- Greater diversity - A mixture of different people and levels of experience on the graduate programme allows each member of the group to challenge, share and develop one another enabling each participant to value and recognise the commercial benefit that can be derived through such diversity
- Commitment - Career change and more experienced graduates typically have a better understanding of the importance of cultural fit and greater awareness of their own values in a commercial context. As a result we have found that career change graduates tend to have completed a good deal of research before deciding upon a new career path and as such tend to have a strong affinity for, understand of and commitment to our organisation
- UCAS points are not included as one of our minimum entry criteria as this can represent a barrier for many mature students, who are more likely to have entered higher education through a non-traditional route.
- The applicant's date of birth is requested in the optional diversity monitoring section of the application form not the compulsory personal details section.
- Each application form we receive is read and marked by one of our trained managers. This process has been developed to ensure that every applicant is judged upon their individual merit and to ensure rich work/life experiences are appropriately marked against our behavioural criteria.
One of the key mechanisms that allowed us to implement these changes was extensive consultation with the business, enabling buy in to the new processes. This came to life in senior design consultation, an extensive business project team and briefings for every manager involved in the process. And this is probably the biggest learning for us along the way, letting our managers challenge and ask questions at every step of the way is what has let us make these changes.
Click icon to download a printable version of the case study
download pdf
