On the 30th of September we welcomed over 30 people into our Innovation Space as a part of the Co-operative Development Scotland series of Successful Succession events. This coincided with our 150th Birthday Celebrations and Macmillan Biggest Coffee Morning and we think the event was a great success!
The purpose of the Employee Ownership event was to promote and encourage current business owners down the route of employee ownership by explaining the journey we took, and the model we are using. Richard Tough, our former family owner, spoke poignantly about the decision that was taken by the family to become employee owned in order to ensure that the company stayed in Tayport, Scotland and would not be sold to a global conglomerate.
Nick Kuenssberg, Chairman then discussed how the transaction took place and how this decision was communicated to the employees. John Palmer, Employee Elected Director closed with a detailed account of how this change has affected the company and its new owners and how we are currently on a mission to achieve employee engagement as we are only 18 months in.
After a tour of the factory and the talks we held a Q&A session with the questions being streamed live via twitter (#SFEO) for all to see. There were a lot of really interesting and thought provoking questions asked by our visitors and I think our panel answered them all well!
For our 150th birthday celebrations we had a Scottish themed hot buffet for our employees and guests and a fantastic cake to cut. The cake was cut by our current longest serving member of staff, Dennis Auld who has been with the company for a whopping 42 years now.
Our Macmillan Biggest Coffee Morning was also held on this day to raise more funds for this important and worthy charity, to date we have raised over £140. As always there was a fantastic turn out for the cake and candy stall and all of our visitors dug deep and had plenty to eat, who could refuse?
