 Hmmm … Welcome, everybody! We're going to pass over now to John Atherton, who'll lead us in this discussion. Hello and we've got our first question which I'm going to answer as we're going. Is this relevant to just co-ops or I'm from a community benefit society? Yes, it's relevant to anybody. To be honest, a lot of what we're talking about will be relevant to anybody who essentially ya colleges any form of member. felly sut mae'r unig iawn ei bobl cymuned ac maidegledigrwydiau, ac mae ei syml. Mae'r gwneud yn allan yn unig. Rydyn ni'n rhaid i'w cael gallu y mwynhau sydd yn gweithio'r unig iawn? A'i gofio ar y swyddi cwestiwn? Yma. Rydyn ni'n ei gweithio'r cwestiynau sydd a rwy'n gwneud i'r unig iawn i'r unig iawn. Rydyn ni'n i gweithio'r unig iawn ar y cwestiwn, o'r gwahodd arddog a'n gyhoedd. Rydyn ni'n golygu'r discussion o'r pethau i'r angen i'r helpu gael ymgyrch, i'ch angen i'r pethau i'r angen i'r pethau i'r angen i'r angen i'r bys? Gwymno'i cael ei wneud ar yr angen i'r angen i'r pethau i'r angen i'r pethau i'r angen i'r bys? Prwy ychydig yn y poll ac rhywun o gwyn nhw'n golygu'r pethau i ceisio. Rydyn ni'n gilydd i'r teimlo i'r parwysau fod y gallai cyd-fynol ei ddweud â'r Cwops UK, a rydyn ni'n gweithio wedi'i gael eich gweithio y bydd y cyfenterwyr cy opposition am dweud i gael'r cyffer a'r dweud i gyfer bobl am weld yma sy'n gofyll parsleynol yn cael ei gael. R الآ, mae gennym fermu gymuned o gael, ychydig erioedwyr ar bobl yn cyfferddau o'i gyfferddau, i gefnodau, a roedd yn gofynnod o mewn ei gael yma, a fyddwn ni'n cael ei gael, a'r erioedwyr a'r mae gennym lluniau gan llawer o'r ffordd anhygoel ac yn bwysig ymlaen nhw. Ond ydych chi'n gwybod ychydig i'r ffordd a chweithio'r wneud y ddechrau. Mae'n ddau'r ffordd o'r tyfu a'r ffordd a'r gweithio, a'r ffordd a'r ddych chi'n gweithio'r webinar. Efallai, Rhaid i'n gweithio. Yn ddiwedd. Rhaid i'n gweithio. Yn ymddangos chi'n gweithio am y Cwopshuk, oedd chi'n ei ffordd am y gweithu. I'm in the middle wearing another jumper and hair just as dishevelled as it is there. That's that's lockdown for you. My name's John Atherton and I'm Head of Membership for Co-Ops UK. I've been here for getting on 12 years now and then next up we have Irina. Do you want to introduce yourself? I'm Irina Piston. I've now been at Co-Ops UK for two years. My background is a corporate background. I apologise for that and even worse in PR and marketing and communications so I come at this from a kind of heavy communications angle but really pleased to be here and absolutely passionate about co-operatives. Complete convert so thanks. Gareth? I'm Gareth. I've been with Co-Ops UK for eight years. I engage with members on a day-to-day basis around all sorts of queries and potential issues that they may have and also ground to meet a lot of members face-to-face direct either at their place of business or offices and also host some of our co-op connections local networking events which are now moved online. Great so we'll move on to some core concepts of membership. So I apologise beforehand. The other joy of COVID is my hand drawn illustrations to go with the webinar so hopefully you can read the handwriting and I'll explain as I go. So really at the absolute core of membership and membership engagement is behaviour. It's the changing behaviour of your members, your users, your customers and really just to kind of mention that right at the start that you know every from a membership point of view most starts of that behaviour or the action comes from a point of need. You know your member will want something, will need something and particularly with our members that's usually from the point of view of confusion or advice and support they need and really how you interact with how you that first point of contact and that first experience they have moved back with them affects future relationships and future iterations on that behaviour and so really just to really reinforce right at the start that you know your member does need something from you that's why why they're a member and whether you're in contact with them through events through phone calls through through your website your social media presence through email or through face to face if they have a bad experience and that experience goes badly and you may not even know it goes badly they will they will walk they will lessen their want and their behaviour to engage with you and it will be harder and harder for them to engage with you in the future because you've essentially disengaged them from that first contact if you have a great experience if they have a great experience of you whether it was a friendly face a really supportive initial email or the the event or webinar was very useful then they're happy you've satisfied their need you've made an impact a positive impact on them and so when it comes background for the next time they need you as a co-op or a community business they're that much more likely to engage with you because the last experience they had was so positive so first impressions absolutely do count and you and by building up good contact experiences over time it means that engaging them in the future becomes easier and easier although that's what the theory says moving on to the next slide so a really interesting graph explaining a bit more on where I'm kind of going with this this core point of engagement which is to get a behaviour if you change to get somebody to do something it really comes down to two points how motivated are they to do it how how much of a problem do they have that you're going to solve or how excited are they in your calls or aligned with with what you want to do as as an organisation and if their motivation is incredibly high they will probably put up with quite a lot of effort to to be involved and to engage whereas if their motivation is very very low it's just buying something from the shop or or there's lots of other things they could do then if you still have a high bar of effort they probably won't engage and so really see membership engagement on this sort of spectrum of of how easy is it for a member to engage with you and how much motivation do they have to engage with you and you can't and you have to balance those two things out so in other words the easier you can make it for them to engage with you the less you have to sell the less you have to really motivate them to engage or if you know that something is quite hurdle to get over applying for membership or or the rest of it then you have to work that much harder to engage them in it to get them over and that's the final point on this slide which is even at the point at which your your motivation their their motivation to engage and the amount of effort it takes to engage is about right they still need a trigger point to jump over so you've got to imagine they've come up to that if you see that red line as a fence they've got up to the fence and to actually engage with you they've got to climb over that fence they've got to do a little bit of a an extra bit of effort to get over and then once on the other side of that they're kind of you kind of away with them then they'll engage with you so both think about in every every piece of contact you have with a member does the effort they have to expel warrant their level of motivation to get involved and if that's about right what's the trigger you're going to do to make them go actually yeah actually yeah I will come to that event or respond to that email or or go and shop there and just think about those those two things so that's the some core concepts of membership moving on to the next slide something you might have come across if you've done your own research around membership and membership engagement is that the ladder of engagement or the ladder in participation and and it's very true it's you know there's loads of research out there around this and it's kind of building on the the point I've made before that it's very unlikely that you're going to if your first engagement with a member is trying to get them to be on the board of your cooperative or or to do something that takes a lot of effort don't be surprised that they won't do it because the amount of effort they have to expel the amount of risk and investment they have to make to do that activity is just too too great it's it's it's too great for them to do and very few people will take that much of a risk or invest that much in something without knowing what's going to happen and so usually what you would like to do with any any member is break up that journey in a way and start out and look at all the things you want to engage a member in and work out what you should do first to get them to warm them up essentially to get them engaged at a low level in an easy to do thing that's that that's less risk reputational risk for them or financial risk for them that's easy to do and get them involved in that and then when they've had a great experience of that you then move them over to the next level what's the next thing that's a bit harder a bit more of an investment and and then so on and so forth and eventually you may well find the next leaders and directors of your cooperative in the future and so this ladder of engagement is what that's really about and so the way I break this down and you can break this down in many different ways for many different situations is it starts with awareness so actually for a lot of us your members just being aware of you just being conscious of your news what you offer what they could get involved in if they wanted to get involved in even keeping abreast of what you do is an organisation takes a level of investment and an engagement and so really that's the first thing are your members aware of what you do the next level is do they associate with what you do so they're aware of what you do and they actually like it they actually tell other people they actually say oh yes I'm a member of or I did this and they're happy to associate with you as an organisation and associate that they're a member of you and that's a next level of engagement in your organisation the next level beyond that tends to be a comment or a criticism so you know yes they that they like you on social media they follow you on social media and things like that but when do they actually comment or reply or retweet what you're doing when do they actually complain or criticise what you're doing it shows a low level you know they've got some sort of buy into what you do they're not going to contribute heavily but just a comment or a criticism a challenge shows you that next level of engagement and you really should be asking for those you know positive and negative feedback then one of the call areas I suppose a lot of us want to get our members into it's that really active contribution and participation coming to an event buying something producing helping you produce helping you volunteer whatever is in your cooperative or community business where you know the member is physically and actively doing something and that's that's what we're all aiming for really but to get there you have to go through those other phases and then finally once you've got members who are contributing you know next actually they want to start having a say they want to be co-designing or co-creating or leading and actually putting themselves forward for position like being a director or or on a committee and things like that and so really be aware of that that ladder of engagement and just realise that but the further you go up the more effort it takes and therefore the more motivation that member needs to have so everything you can do to make their motivation to to improve their motivation but equally make make them feel like it's not so hard but actually they've already done so much there's a great load of work around the sunk cost fallacy which basically says the more people invest in something the more they're willing to do it because they've already invested so much and actually if people realise that's usually this case with volunteering if people realise at the start of their volunteering journey what volunteering would entail they would never volunteer in the first place it's just they got so far down the line and so invested in that organisation that actually they've done more than they ever expected and so that's generally what a ladder of engagement looks like and it's also being mined for that the ladders of engagement will be different for different people so for some people they will find it really easy like an elevator engaging in some parts of what you do and other parts of what you do they will find really hard and differently for different people so for example some people love a meeting you know they might be retired they might not have many responsibilities at home so they can give up an evening and come to a meeting that's not a huge issue for them whereas somebody else that's just really hard they just could not give up an evening or a weekend because of their time and on the flip side getting engaged digitally somebody might find it really hard to engage in a technological and digital way just because that's not the way they operate and it's a concern and a risk for them whereas somebody else a younger person it's not an issue they can use any platform in any way and they'll pick it up so just being mindful that all of your members and users are very different and how they what they will find hard is different for different audiences can we move to the next slide and so final this is suppose more of a tip really than than a concept it's knowing that all of that users and members are very different than each other and knowing that within your organisation you'll have very different ways of engaging with members it's really useful to do an activity called you know user journey mapping or you know when you when you google it google customer service or customer journey mapping or user journey mapping rather than member mapping and what this really is is it's an opportunity as a as a team within your organisation to really map out some of those member relationships and I think it's a really useful activity to do so I'll quickly go through it essentially what you do is you get the people closest to the members in a room and even better some actual members as well but that's not always the case and you map out a journey so it could be anything it could be engaging an event it could be joining whatever whatever you want to do but try and have a distinct journey with a start and an end point so at Cops UK a classic example for us is a member joining throughout the year we serve them and at the end of the year they renew and so that would be the journey we'd take a member on then what then what you do in in and using a workshop format is you put on a big whiteboard all the activity the contact points you have with that member and by that I mean print off the emails print off the web pages put actual examples throughout the the journey of what they what they will see and how they will interact with you what's your process you're following and put that at the top really if you're doing this on a a flip chart or a whiteboard then think about the why so you've got your processes written down why do members engage with you and why do you want members to engage with you at each of those phases and have a think about that and then the most important part of this workshop is to track actual experience from members which is why it's great to have members in the room or if you can't have members in the room collect loaded data on actual behaviour from members or quotes or testimonials from members and track what they what you think or what they tell you they think that they're feeling and experiencing throughout that member journey with you and so you you will plot that on usually between you know minus minus 10 to plus 10 and you track that and if you've got the image up you can see there's a red line where I've I've plotted and tracked it and what this is really useful for is you can marry how you think members are feeling and experiencing you and their journey against the actual bits of contact they've had with you and it's a really good way of analysing whether a specific email or a specific process you can improve because at that point in the journey members are not as happy and so you can do this for multiple different user journeys and of course okay this is what we would do and we will take time every so often to unpick a piece of engagement we're having with members and trying to work out why they didn't engage in it or why it was massively successful and it didn't engage in it and so doing a member journey exercise is really useful so that's it for some core membership concepts hopefully that's giving you some food for thought and we're now going to move into a bit of a discussion piece that Gareth is going to lead. So following on from John's concepts there we want to think a little bit more about the actual interactions that we have with members and how and why they might be meaningful to us as a co-op to us as an organisation. Irene can you introduce the next slide wonderful thank you so to kick this off let's actually run a poll and see if we can get an idea of everyone's thoughts on this so Irene's going to launch the post sorry the poll even and you can respond with three answers so the question we're asking is what member interactions are most meaningful to you? Well leave this up for a moment or so or until at least we get a good amount of responses that we can draw something from it so hopefully on your screens you should have sent the poll pop-up if you can select as many as you think are relevant to your co-op and the interactions that you have with your members and by all means if there's interactions that we don't mention there stick them in the chat. Of course yeah continue to use the the chat and the Q&A. So just about half of voted so we'll just wait a little bit longer as as people start voting more so interesting results coming in which we'll share. From the Q&A I'll try and speak a little bit louder as well all right Lucy's saying that she can only select the one not multiple if you select the most important then we'll go from there sorry just a few more we're waiting to hear from give you a little bit more time yeah I think we'll probably call a day there and end the poll okay and in some respects not by surprise the most the the member interactions that are most meaning for you are AGMs and meetings so you know a core part of being a co-op member is is taking part it's being involved and not more so than end of year annual annual general meeting or perhaps a monthly members meeting and I suppose why we tried to to bring this up and to focus on this is you only have a certain amount of time to engage your members and trying to think about what is most effective in how you do engage and what's most cost effective getting bang for the book as it were and how much effort does this actually involve you know running an AGM depending on the amount of members that you have can be a huge endeavour I know certainly with our AGM coming up and the the shift of that being a more online event this year that has meant a lot of time and effort and thinking this has to go on into how we actually shift that and certainly the thinking about this is an essential function that we have to run there and we know that it's meaningful to to both us and our members in terms of how they they take part in it and close second I think we've got there two social media zoom meetings since the lockdown a closing of spaces outlets opportunities to actually meet face to face so by you know no surprise their zoom meetings I think from conversations that I'm having with our members now we've all moved very quickly and a lot of our members have also made that transition to online very quickly it's been a necessary evil and a a means for an end for us so we've seen a really sharp uptake in members member co choosing to use zoom meetings and I think some of the learning from this is that those that have found it easier than others are now thinking about how they utilise this and try and engage with members in the future because I know it's it certainly can be difficult to try and attend lots of different events and being many places all at the same time so travel being taken out of the equation allowing members to to join in and to engage online is now providing us with opportunities to engage with those who might not necessarily have got involved with us gareth sorry john john's raised his hand just a part of this um poll discussion he just wants to say something anybody else who wants to raise their hand following john please do we can bring you in no problem yes i was going to say it'd be great to get other people's thoughts on why why they put a gm up um as a as a membership person for 12 years a gms are the what's the word the bind of all of our lives I think and it's something that we all struggle with I was in a really liberating conversation with a nationwide of all of all organisations and they've consciously decided really that the a gm is not the central point of their engagement with members it's it's a process that has to take place and they do it but actually they've decided that they're going to shift more of that sort of engagement into other meetings and and tours where the chief executive goes round and and tours in much smaller shorter meetings and they found it's a much better way of of trying to engage the members rather than to shoehorn lots of different interactions into one solitary event like an a gm so it's a this is one of the reasons why we pose this question is a what what meaningful what's meaningful to you as an organisation and we'll go on to another poll afterwards is that's the key thing you know an a gm is very much of interest to secretaries of cooperatives and community-based societies and I think as membership people with the focus on members always be mindful of of that but anyway I'm rambling does anybody else have any comments they want to come back with or thoughts in terms of a gms we put it as a we work with hails and cooperatives and we put it as a stipulation within their pre-tenancy that they participate in a gms so it's our opportunity to engage with members thank you any other ones that you would have chosen if you could have done probably social media because we do a lot of engagement through social media thank you so we've been thinking about what interactions are most meaningful to you your co-op your organisation but of course members members come first and so what what flipping this on its head what do we think the interactions are the most meaningful for your members going to run another poll it will just be the one answer then I'd imagine so to clear that up so it's quite a similar list but we're just asking you to flip this on on its head to the side perhaps think with your your own member co-op hat on and how you interact with the co-ops that you're a member of okay so the results are in then top on there direct phone calls and emails closely followed by joint second pre-covid events conferences face to face and the social media and I think thinking about meaningful engagement with members here this is going back to john's concepts and the behavioral change break points and that a member's motivation compared to the amount of effort that it takes to actually get involved and to engage something is is really crucial to that that meaningful engagement there and the direct phone calls and emails there I know it's not exactly um it's not something that every co-op team can do sometimes interactions are very much just over the counter or in a space of work or or wherever your co-operative operates out of there but I think in some respects this is a missing part of engagement that some co-ops are often overlooking that um you know having that that quick short phone call to try and help a member or to gain insight in what they need and and why they're wanting to engage or are already engaging is is really crucial as to what's useful if you are doing research around the topic a lot of general marketing and comms research is is applicable to membership and so there's a lot of research that says um people people engage both for transactional reasons you know a direct transaction of value they need something they get something from you but also emotional and emotive reasons for for why they would engage with you and I suppose what we what we tend to find at Coops UK and it might be the same in your organisation is you tend to hook people with a transactional relationship um the the specific piece of value they get from you but what keeps them in membership for longer is that is that emotional physical contact and so you know at Coops UK that if a member attends a physical event or has a physical face-to-face chat with with us they they get that much more of a bond and so it's within your organisation it's it's working out actually an again going back to the point at the start what really easy things and simple things can you get people engaged with to start with but because you know you're building up to harder things like events or physical face-to-face but the payoff and the reward for for those those harder engagements really do pay off as long as obviously the whole underlying point for all of this is the the the the contact they have with you is positive and a positive experience rather than a negative experience obviously those that have um replied direct phone calls nine of you do you have any views on why you know that's important to your members and perhaps um didn't wasn't as important on our first poll um I think it's that instant contact that they can have with somebody do you know what I mean so um you know whether it's a phone call or an email um we're we're a service provider so we're a managing agent to several hazing cooperatives do you know what I mean so I think it's that kind of reassuring instant contact that they that they can have with somebody and if if um you think members actually do see this as one of the most important contacts with us do you think as organisations we're putting in as many resources as possible in terms of that side of our engagement um yeah I think we are I think we're doing as much as we can in terms of you know we do explore other avenues as well as engaging with members but I think um particularly direct phone calls and emails I think that's that's probably one of the most important things that they expect from us really in terms of being able to get in contact with us and and having that sort of instant contact fill it commentary oh yeah we've certainly felt like it would be really nice to just be picking up the phone a lot and speaking to our members and trying to find out how they're doing at the moment but it's just been really difficult to find the time and we keep talking about it but they're not finding the time to do it and um I don't I don't have any answers it's just that I do recognise that as um a really tough one because it sort of seems like that gives the ones who receive that phone call really kind of clear experience that we reached out to them but um at the same time it is a very laborious so it would eat up a lot of staff time trying to do it so um we haven't kind of cracked it but uh I think it would be it's it sort of feels really desirable but yeah we haven't found a way to make it a sort of systematic approach yes John did you want to say something yes I suppose it's more of a top tip I suppose um before we we are moving on to top tips in a minute but um one of the things we're going to look to do at Cops UK more is we do a lot of member calls but we have over 800 members now and so we're probably going to instigate monthly or weekly kind of end of the week webinar chats so now everyone's very ofe with zoom then we'll probably start to particularly new members as they join invite them to take part in a bit of a conversation where they can meet the membership team and and and actually other new members as well and so it's a great way of using time efficiently so rather than having to phone have lots and lots of one to one engagements with lots of members by doing something like a zoom call or a webinar you can have one to many relationships which is just a little bit more time efficient for your staff and actually the member probably gets as much value out of it because they both talk to the the member of staff but they also talk to other new members or other members in a similar situation to them so I think I know we're looking at doing more of those sorts of like one to many conversations and calls that might just be informal you know they don't have to be structured webinars or anything that's bit of a top tip just to quickly come in on on the phone calls and you know trying to engage members one to one in recruitment we talk about member get member but also you know depend on the the size type structure of your co-op members talking to members may happen at an age or a meeting or in the place of work in the the shop the outlets wherever it is so I know certainly from some of the mutual aid groups they've been looking at organising calls from either certain areas or certain interests and and so it might even be worth looking at the option in the same way as the NHS volunteers were potentially going to do so in in members talking to other members or more engaged members trying to reach out and engage with other members so I've not really heard of many exploring it but it's you know the potential is there we we don't know how long the the long-term lockdown and implications of that are going to go on okay so top tips from our perspective on my perspective as I said I'm from a PR communications background and I've also done lots of different things like own cafes as well and this was before I knew enough about cooperatives but now and in hindsight if I was running a small business again and it could be anything it could be a cafe because that's what I've done before but it could be a bookshop it could be any kind of small organisation it could be office bound it could be a venue I know there's some energy groups on the line swimming pools whatever it is that you run if I was doing my cafe again I know that I would go mad on the co-op element so to the point where I would be in touch with co-ops UK and I'd be asking them for 50 of their finest posters and I will literally wallpaper one wall in my cafe with those posters and I know it seems odd but when you come from a kind of gorilla PR background of mine these are the discussion points in your premises that lead very much to the right conversations that get you members and as everyone knows who's starting a business you've got your kind of four to eight people founding members who are absolutely trying to make this business the best that it can be get heavily involved in the operational side of things and then you realise the co-op or the social enterprise element and messaging starts to wane a bit because everyone's doing the business I know how that feels but it's the element of the co-op messaging that is absolutely crucial and you've probably just lost your best advocates of that message because they're all embroiled in the business so use your premises use your what you where you are as your talking points and so I would definitely go big on the co-op element it would be the thing about my cafe that's more important than the best coffee that we sell it's the thing that I'll always be keep talking about and then when you start the conversation I'll be always saying but we need more members we can't do this without you so this is the nudge technique on explaining why this cafe or this work that you do this office this swimming pool what would be happening in your area if you weren't around and we all know a little bit of the nudge technique on our texts that we get from hospitals or medical or medical centres which say if you don't make your appointment that's going to cost the NHS £160 well now in Covid times we know that that's not something we want to cause a difficult with the NHS it makes you want to go to your your appointments it makes you not want to let people down so it's just looking at the similar sort of nudge techniques in order for us to engage our members to come to our events get involved in their meetings and just want to be with us in terms of time whether it's money or time you just want to nudge them in that direction so think of the equivalent nudges for your organisation is what I would say in order to get members to engage Thanks Irene, Gareth what are your two tips? From me this comes from experience and day to day anyway that is never presumed that you know what your members want I remember making this mistake some years ago and then spending a couple of days regretting what I'd said and how I'd engage with that member and it was because I had heard something and I presumed myself what their actual need was so regardless of whether this is a new member that's recently joined or someone who's been with you and your co-op for a long part of your journey my tip there is really just don't try and presume or second guess what their actual need is you know ask them and try and ask them to be as explicit as they can be about what it is they really want to engage with you on the other one which I think we've already touched upon earlier talking about direct phone calls and contacts is to address a member's immediate concerns you know whether a member comes to you face to face whether it's by email or by a phone call is that they're calling with a need about either a service or a product or some sort of interaction that they're going to have with you and it's about really trying to boil down what it is that their concerns or their issue is there and making sure that you get it right first time and if you're not able to to to to sort that thing immediately then it's going away and thinking about how how can you do so because essentially all the members are going to have this concern as well. Thank you. My top tips first one and be really clear on why why why you're engaging people in something particularly if that is a KPI from up high in the organisation so I had many people contact me over the years about youth engagement we need to engage the youth and my first comeback is why what what are you going to engage them in what's the purpose of it is it to improve is it to because the board have told you to engage young people or is it because you want young people to do a very specific thing and so be really clear rather than just setting yourself engagement it you know performance measures and all the rest of it it's really work out why what's the point of it and if there isn't really an obvious point then don't be surprised as people don't want to engage in it so young people being a good example is actually young people really do want to get involved in things where they can make a difference make a change and they're not interested in getting engaged in things in a tokenistic way and so be really clear from the start why why should they care about what you want to engage them in second tip for me is breaking breaking the membership meal into bite size pieces so you might have within your organisation a a big chunk of work or a big thing you want to engage members in and because you deal with it every single day day and day out it might not look that big or that that's scary but it really is if somebody's new to your organisation or doesn't even know your organisation then engaging is a huge hurdle to go through so what can you do to break that up and make it less scary so just for example a tip might be if you know you're doing an event where you want your members to join coming to an event on your own is really scary so can you get another member to give them a call and say I'll meet you outside and so they go into the room with another member or or other ways you can make the interaction or the initial interaction with you just less scary just smaller easy to do easier to bite into so that's my two tips and so now over to you really if you've got any tips you want to raise you can either type them into the chat or you can raise your hand and we'll call you out and you can share your tip on how to engage members or ways you found to engage members that's worked really really well so so put them in the chat or raise your hand and Irina will introduce you and and also I'd really like to know from anyone what what are the kind of frustration parts in your organisation that you'd really like to be able to nail from a member engagement point of view so I'll just let Jane come in to talk but have a think about if you could and let and share with us if you can what are the the most difficult parts of your organisation to put across is it the messaging let us know what's the most difficult part for you to to get over to your members and let's have a chat about that go ahead Jane one mute Jane can you hear me I'm just trying to unmute you now okay so is that right yes yes okay sorry so I'll start again my name is Jane Avery I'm a director of central England co-op and also a co-owner of case a co-operative that promotes other co-ops in Leicestershire so the so I think for me meaningful membership the importance is meaningful so looking at central England co-op I think it's important to engage with members in different on different levels so some members are members purely because we provide a need for people providing food in their locality and also funeral services and so on and so forth so and that is their engagement and and that's fine that's active membership and that's fine and others want to be engaged and we want to engage with people on all levels so I think variety for us at central England co-op is the is the key really to engaging with members and our members engaging with us so in this coronavirus one of our drama groups has obviously had to cancel what they were doing so that's cut back on their income and they have started doing quizzes online and that's brought in a lot more people to know about them who are particularly interested in drama maybe but that's that's about being support and being cooperative so that's one example and there's been an engagement it's hard when it's a big co-op to engage with grassroots levels and so that's just one point and the other point is from cases point of view it's using on the ground networks I think that I think there has to be a push and pull there has to be a reason for people to want to be members but that and some of that reasoning can be altruistic and some of it can be this is what I want what I need and the co-op meets that economic need or social need or need in my community yeah it's interesting Jane I wonder if I can ask a question in terms of your members do you think they they get why you need members do you think that's important for you to get across is that is that something that you grapple over well I think it's I think that I think one of the first slides that John put up about that ladder of engagement was quite important so a lot of people um and there are there are degrees of involvement in membership so I don't think it probably is very obvious to people when they are first engaging with the with the co-op why membership is important and integral to being co-op and you know the difference between a good co-op and one that is a sort of a co-op in name only yeah does anyone else have any other experiences with members wanting to get members on board but then finding it difficult to express and um and just interpret why the need is great why you want to member and what to do with them do they know who they are do you know um do they know what a member is to you um anybody else got any experiences of that that they want to share John do you want to come in I just think if there's no more tips from anybody else we could move on to the kind of Q&A surgery bits with our last so this is what arena mentioned before um this is really your opportunity now uh to really share any burning questions or or trials and tribulations and issues you're working through at the moment and you've got at least three membership people here on the line but also everyone uh in the webinar who might be able to help you with that that that question or that issue so if you've got a question or an issue you want to raise type it into the chat or uh or ask raise your hand and arena can bring you into the conversation so you can explain what your question or your issue is. Thanks Richard. So um our biggest issue at the moment is obviously um how we go forward in terms of holding ADMs at the moment because um we've got a lot of you've got a lot of members from our housing cooperatives um a lot of them are elderly they won't necessarily have the technology or the ability to um go online and do virtual meetings um so it's how do we move forward with anything like an ADM because uh a few of our co-ops at the moment would be looking at holding their ADMs uh in May. So um we've caught your case got a lot of uh guidance on online which we can point you to after this session is finished on how to how to conduct what you can and can't do essentially um everyone's rules are different but uh things around proxy voting or doing entirely online ADMs or essentially postponing ADMs so we've got loads of advice and guidance which we can share with you uh yeah Gareth put something up about how to do that and and like I say it kind of depends on how your co-ops builds so for example co-ops UK can run an entirely online ADM with online voting and there are lots of options out there whether it's Zoom or you can essentially you can pay pay organisations to to run your ADM for you online so it's personally perfectly possible to do it if your rules allow you to hold uh online ADMs but like I say our our advice and guidance is there um I didn't say this but what you could always do is hold a meeting on the presumption that nobody comes and then you can postpone it uh which I know some people have have done which it's not entirely uh good practice but it but it does work if you physically have to have a physical meeting and there's nothing you can do about it they've essentially just held it at the chair's house and no one's gone and then they've postponed it until a later date but yeah if you you can't do something else uh I do and like I say although our advice and guidance on on how to do it is uh is online does that help at all or can you do you know if you can do online ones I think our biggest problem is that our co-operatives operate under the 1981 fully mutual co-operative rules which virtually don't allow sort of meetings in a digital format so meetings are a technical space we don't face to face only yeah and one of the things we're lobbying for at the moment and getting see getting clarity on is how long a society can postpone an AGM for because I know that with the company legislation there they're allowing companies to postpone them for longer periods and at the moment we're just getting clarity on how exactly how long the society can postpone it if it if physically can't can't hold the meeting um so we'll we'll make a note of yours and get back to you offline about it okay thank you the Q&A sorry I was just going to jump in because Alice um has asked a question here can anyone give examples of how members participate in the organizations and their organizations except for AGM votes um this is what we struggle with in how how do members participate and that's a community farm running a veg box scheme um you know of course um well I'd imagine you're still able to potentially run the veg box scheme I know some community shops that do so I still managing to do so it it's looking at your members and how they they can still feel part of what it is you're doing I mean I know some community pubs have still managed to run their quizzes and they're asking for the members to form smaller groups and they can essentially have their own quizzes together other members such as I know um what was it we talked about feeding things back to the website so engaging members perhaps in a photo competition or something they can do at distance so they still feel they have a connection and they're still able to be recognised and shown as as members doing things and participating with the society so for these is the veg box um it's breaking down all the all the things that you need help and support with us as an organization and then trying to work out whether engaging members with those issues will will help you out so it could be do do do can you ask members for their engagement in the setting of your environmental policy and um for example all your policy on deliveries or any part of your business and all that doesn't mean is doing a huge long document sending it out to members asking them to really read a huge long document and comment on it that's a lot of effort but it might mean is polling your members through social media on some very specific questions about your environmental policy or or whatever and then essentially taking on board their views and feeding that back and so it's it's working out you know co-operatives and community benefit societies can you've got all these members you've got data on tap you've got people who are loyal to your organization who will give you advice for free which private companies tend to have to pay for so really do you think about how can you break down all the things you need to work through as a co-op ask members in bite-sized ways and then feedback to them what you did so as a veg box could you could you get um get them to fill in a survey of what are the most popular veggies and then that will inform your your your priorities for what goes in the veg box you know it's really simple things like that it doesn't have to be about voting at AGMs and elections it could be asking their opinion on anything and the crucial piece is as long as if you've asked their opinion for something you you do the you say we did you know you said you wanted more carrots in your veg box so we've done it and and that kind of response to to any sort of member feedback makes people realise that what they what they what they gave you you did something with and we've got a few more comments to just go through quite quickly I'll just bring Philip in very quickly who I know has been waiting for a while so just to unmute you Philip thanks um yeah I just had a quick one which was uh kind of when we're thinking about member engagement at the moment one of the things what we want to do is tell them what we have been doing on their behalf and kind of for them during the COVID stuff in relation to kind of how it's been impacting them and we've been trying to respond to that so I just wondered if you had any advice about how you judge the tone of on the one hand sort of respecting that it is a crisis and the extent to which we've actually helped them when they might be really struggling personally and professionally is probably limited uh but at the same time wanting them to know that we have actually responded and done some things and kind of tried to be there for them during this time um yeah just sort of from a communications perspective do you have any advice about how to how to judge that balance go ahead John I saw my colleagues pausing then it's a really difficult one because members people are all different and I suppose as if you're involved in membership you try to build an insight into the sorts of members you've got and so I know at Crocs UK we've got a fairly robust set of members who have high expectations but equally we can be fairly robust with them back we tend to find and so I'm always of the view that you're you're open and honest with your members about both your faults and where you've made mistakes or when they've missed something that they that you did send them in an email or all that sort of thing so I'm I'm personally of the opinion that I tend to be open and honest with members and and people give you the benefit of the doubts and people tend to respect openness and honesty yeah and Philip did you mention what sort of organisation you're from oh sorry I thought I didn't realise I was unmuted still um yeah I'm from community energy england which means that I'm more like commute co-op to UK than I am about one of your co-op members perhaps um so I'm sort of asking from a smaller peer really rather than one of your members perspective as such but yeah and um and do you feel that you've got a um a kind of a clear line on why you need members and you can express that to them um clearly or do you feel that's that's an area that you need to work on um definitely something we want to refine where we present ourselves but we certainly have um a really established message about why our members are really important to us group kind of particularly from the representative perspective in the sense that we call ourselves the voice of their sector so that's that we need their membership to um to justify how we advocate on their behalf so we're sort of a um a feedback loop in the sense that uh we we think they need us to help them get a supportive policy environment just as we need them um to justify our existence and the voice that we have but it's sort of within that context responding to the COVID stuff we've we've done it from that angle but it's just I we don't want to kind of shout about it and say aren't we amazing because of all these things we've done for you and this is why you should stay a member it seems like trading on a really kind of awful situation that some of them might be finding extremely difficult to to make ourselves look good yeah go ahead John I was going to say I'm conscious we've we're kind of running over so I'm thinking um we're quite happy to stay on the line and carry on q and a's and conversations with people uh past past past four o'clock um but if you do have to duck out duck out early and just to say if you do have to duck out we will be sharing all the tips and and answer questions afterwards and there will be a a feed a feedback form that goes out um but I'm quite happy to stay on and carry on with some answering some questions if that's and if you're happy to stay on do stay on um I saw a question from mid counties I think it was about engaging young people um I suppose just to say I go back to the point I mentioned before is particularly with young people be really clear what you want to engage them with and what's in it for them and equally because you know young people expect results pretty quickly so again structure your engagement around things that you can realistically respond to very quickly because they're not going to wait three months for a consultation to be over and you to get back to them so um try to manage their and your expectations around the sorts of things you can engage them with because you know you can ask them you can poll them you can have a workshop and you know fairly quickly you can get back to them with the results or what you're going to do about it and if it's a if it's a big issue that you know you're not going to be able to respond to them very quickly about then just try to be mindful of that and try to think of ways you can shorten the gap between getting their opinion on something and feeding back to them and equally you know real things you know I've we did a great workshop a few years ago from uh by a young person about how to engage them and they were very passionate and they were very passionate about uh social change and and the world and but they wanted it grounded in how it would affect them as as young people um so yeah yeah just just on that as well with young people um we have seen and also um provided fairly good and engaging discussions with business colleges um further education business colleges and then you've got a group of about 80 or so young people all thinking they're going to listen to a a business related powerpoint and then they start to unravel this almost secret um about cooperatives and that's a really good way of um engaging with young people in the business education sector just to jump on that um towards the end um when thinking about those strategies also be thinking about the platforms and the tools that you're going to use to try and engage with young people um I know in speaking to a co-op a couple of years ago they said that they were they were looking at how they engaged and tried to bring in more young people that would engage with what they do but also then potentially come members and one of the simplest ways that they they understood this was asking a younger member and saying you know what is it you you glean from your membership your interactions with us ended up then passing them their um facebook account and they allowed them to post and use that for the week and I think that helped them to understand there how young people wanted to be taught to and with John saying about getting some of those instant um you know combats rewards as it were from that engagement with them yeah and the other thing I would say about um particularly engaging young people or new new audiences is you could have a fantastic journey around something particularly aimed at them as an audience and then if at the end of that journey there's kind of this hard stop and they just enter the normal relationship or normal experience that's a key point that they'll leave on get disengaged and so I suppose the analogy could be you could engage a young people in a really fantastic exciting activity in game or whatever and then they come to their first member meeting and it's a really boring meeting done in a very old-fashioned way they're not going to come to a second meeting so some of some of the engagements about how how do you take the best bits of how you've tried to engage a new audience and try and bring those things into the mainstream ways you engage members because to be honest your normal members will be will be will be usually be happy for you to improve and improve the ways you engage them so yeah do more do more of your normal meetings the way young people might like meetings okay we have got just one comment I think it'll be worth just finishing on if we can Tanya Noon we've been surprised how many older members have engaged by digital means um from a tai chi group to creative writing groups I think we need to embrace this and offer more training it's a really good point isn't it and I think I've been surprised as well when the needs must the old generation actually will put the time into engage and have seen the great value in it so yes thanks Tanya for that um we're struggling with engagement with surveys during COVID-19 we've done that and I think I have a question regarding the strategies to try and engage young people thank you um I think we've we're coming to the end of it now so unless there's any other comments or hands up from anybody else if you do want to say something please do um we're just wrapping up anybody else want to discuss the final points John? It's not from me I don't think Gareth any final comments um I think we've we've covered quite a lot in a short space of time there um I know we've already said about members getting in touch with us uh certainly you know we're talking about engagement here and we want to hear from members whether it's COVID related or it's membership related we still want to hear you so um yeah just a call to say do get in touch with us if you need in future