Our Ethics in Action’ brings to life initiatives to inspire young people, tackle global poverty and combat climate change, as well as our unique approach to ethical finance.
Our short film above shows a summary of The Co-operative Group’s 2008/9 Sustainability Report and celebrates the difference Co-operative members, colleagues and customers make to communities in the UK and across the world.
The BBC is currently airing a series of four programmes presented by Kirsty Young about how British families have changed since the Second World War.
The fourth programme being shown on Monday, 1 February is all about paternity leave. Our very own Rob Dawson, a property Manager here at the bank and his family were interviewed for the programme.
Rob’s children who are now 11 and 15, and back in the 90’s when they were born not many companies offered paternity leave, the Co-op being one of the first to introduce the scheme.
We caught up with Rob to ask how his television debut came about and how he and his family felt about spending a day with a BBC camera crew.
If you missed the programme on 1 February, you can watch it on BBC iPlayer.
The report’s authors, David McLeod and Nita Clarke, visited a wide range of businesses and heard evidence from a number of experts in the field – including Richard Lewis, from our very own culture team.
One of the key recommendations of the report was to provide practical support and advice to businesses on how to engage their people – and the reports authors’ came back to Richard for help.
“As a result of the report, they assembled a panel of people who work in this field, and we get together every few months to share ideas and help shape this advice to business,” explained Richard.
“At one of the meetings they asked people to talk on video about what engagement means to them, and what advice they would offer.”
You can view Richards’ video above.
“The campaign is called the People Interaction, and they have a hub on the internet which can be accessed via the government’s Business Link service,” said Richard.
“Our colleagues at The Co-operative Group were used as a case study in the original report, and now the government are using us as a good example for the wider economy,” he added. “It’s a real boost for our movement.”
We recently told you about our new Customer Council and we are pleased to report that the first meeting, held earlier this month was a success.
The first item on the agenda was a Board update from Tim Franklin, who is chief operating officer here at CFS. This included a market overview and customer satisfaction results. Tim also answered the Council’s questions on a variety of topics from employee satisfaction to brand development.
The meeting then split into groups to discuss the purpose and objectives of the new Council. The comments and ideas will be incorporated in the terms of reference and in our future plans to recruit new members and communicate the Council’s success.
The groups then discussed how CFS could put its customers and members first in everything it does.
Feedback from those that attended was very positive and there are many new ideas to pursue following our discussions, including using the internet and this site to recruit new members.
If you are interested in applying to join the Council please post a comment (no personal details are required) and we’ll send you an application pack and further information by email.
Please note your email address won’t be published within your comments.
And finally – what’s in a name?
One of the issues we were not able to resolve in the meeting was the Council’s name. How do you like the name Customer Council? Does it describe what the Council is about for you? Can you think of anything better? Please let us know…
Receiving the award are: Neil Pollitt, Sue Cambage-Hughes, David Bishop and Chris Adams.
At the UK Customer Experience awards ceremony yesterday in London, CFS were awarded ‘Best Large Company’. This is fantastic recognition as it recognises CFS in the wider market, not just financial services.
During the assessment for the award, we we’re benchmarked against over 1800 companies across all sectors.
We were able to showcase our brand experience as well as highlight areas in our Strategy, Culture and Customer Intelligence. The recent merger was also reviewed as part of the assessment in particular around the alignment of our values and culture.
All aspects of our customer experience were assessed as above average with a fantastic 100% mark for customer focus and 90% for customer retention. Of course there some small areas for improvement, no one’s perfect, however overall CFS was seen as an “excellent example of a service excellence organisation”.
Have you experienced good or bad customer service from us here at CFS? We pride ourselves on customer service and want to know what you think. Leave your comments below.
Before Britannia merged with Co-operative Financial Services on 1 August 2009, Britannia ran a Members’ Council. This was a group of 24 members who met with the chief executive and other senior managers, four times a year to discuss all aspects of the business including strategy, products, ethics and people policies.
The Council was very effective in giving the business in depth feedback on various proposals including the membership reward scheme, the customer experience and, of course, the merger.
Given the success of the Council in providing a ‘sense check’ on business proposals and challenging Britannia’s operation, it was decided to continue a Council for the merged Co-operative Financial Services business.
The new Council will meet for the first time on Friday 4 December to receive an update from the CFS Board, discuss the role of the new Council and give their feedback on the proposals for a customer-led propostition.
Tim Franklin, CFS’s chief operating officer will be attending to give the Board report and take questions. The meeting will be chaired by Lord Tom Sawyer, who has chaired the Britannia Members’ Council since it’s creation in 2002.
There are a few vacancies on the Council and applications are welcome. Anyone can join – the only condition is that you are a customer of CFS.
Leave a comment below if you would like to know more about the Council or how to apply. We’ll contact you directly with further information.
Please note your email address won’t be published within your comments.
Stay tuned for updates on how the first meeting went!
At an awards ceremony at the Grosvenor Hotel in London last night, Peter Marks was named as Orange Leader of the Year in the National Business Awards.
The award recognises innovation and excellence in business leadership and is presented to the individual who best represents outstanding achievement and has demonstrated exceptional business acumen and vision over the last 12 months.
We’ve recently had a variety of questions through the blog asking us questions ranging from, ‘How as a bank do we pursue our ethics policy with regard to banking itself?’ to ‘How as a business do we respond to humanitarian crisis?
Well back in September we published our most recent sustainability report, a “warts and all” look at The Co-operative Group, focusing on the social, ethical and environmental issues that are most material to the businesses and its stakeholders.
Do you have any questions yourself around any of these topics? Leave us a comment and tell us what you think or alternatively send us an email at: CFSgwmblog@cfs.coop
On Saturday 5 December 2009, before the UN climate summit in Copenhagen, tens of thousands of people from all walks of life will flow through the streets of London for The Wave to demonstrate their support for a safe climate future for all.
The Wave will send a strong message to world leaders that a safe and fair deal must be agreed in order for dangerous levels of climate change to be avoided.
On the day, people taking part will be encouraged to wear blue clothing and bring blue fabric and banners to create a human wave.
Here at CFS we have a history of tackling big issues, and we get results. The Climate Change Act was introduced in 2008, after The Big Ask saw 22,000 of our customers and members contact their MP to demand a strong climate change bill.
To support The Wave we’ve teamed up with Oxfam and the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition to get as many of our members to join the procession and are providing subsidised transport to attend.
You can find out more about the march and our involvement on our website for The Wave. If you’re a member you can book your place now and anyone wanting to keep abreast of how the march is going can sign up for regular updates and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
So get involved in what ever way you can and help make this the biggest climate change march in history so the world leaders sit up and take notice.
We’ve been proudly embracing social media here at CFS, making good use of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other blogs to engage our employees, customers, members and anyone else who is interested in what we do.
We can proudly say that the GWM blog is the first ethical blog of its kind created by a financial services provider. Our blog gives us a place to showcase all of the amazing things that we do and at the same time allows people to have their say.
We now have a Twitter page for the Blog and Our Press Team have also been tweeting away on their own Twitter page and have built up quite a following. We’ve also found Twitter to be really useful in pulling together all our online activity and invaluable in listening to what people are saying about us on-line.
Our employees also actively use Facebook with 3 official Facebook groups being set up, The CCC is a great place to work, The Mighty Co-operative Branch Network and My Direct Sales. See our Press Release for more about our social media presence.
So why not engage with us online, follow us on Twitter, watch us on YouTube, join us on Facebook and tell us what you think here…
Here you can find all the latest news and campaigns in line with our brand values and stories linked to our social responsibility and community involvement.
You’ll hear more about our external campaigns on key areas such as microfinance, responsible driving, renewable energy, and much, much more.
Please email us at, CFSgwmblog@cfs.coop if you would like more information about our campaigns.
In April ‘09 in conjunction with the new goodwithmoney website we re-launched our new and improved good with money blog to encourage greater dialogue with our colleagues, customers, members and anyone else who is interested in the ethical, social responsible and community work that we do. Read on…
