Inspiration Session – November 27, 2024: Harmonizing Employment Conditions at Coop and PLUS

From three employment packages with many individual, tailor-made arrangements to one new employment conditions package and a new employment contract—detached from the collective labor agreement (CLA). Judith Peters, HR Director of the newly merged Coop and PLUS supermarket chains, managed to achieve this with her team and support from BexerHamstra. She shared her experiences during our inspiration session on November 28.

What is she most proud of? Judith Peters doesn’t hesitate:

“That after a year and a half of hard work, everyone transitioned without a single formal objection from employees. That must mean we did something right.”

Not that it was an easy process. From the moment Coop and PLUS merged in 2022, it was clear that harmonizing the vastly different employment conditions at the head office would be a major challenge. It became a top priority, especially since employees were expected to collaborate closely right away.

“People were literally walking through each other’s spaces, so it was really urgent,” Peters explains.

Not two, but three different schemes had to be forged into one new benefits package. There were differences in pay levels between PLUS and Coop. Moreover, PLUS's pay was linked to the collective bargaining agreement, while Coop had actually abandoned that in the most recently developed policy. Why? Peters: 'By directly passing on CAO increases to everyone, you usually have very little budget space left to let the people who really perform well grow more. So little differentiation is possible with such a system. That's why at Coop we had already opted for a different remuneration policy. The transition had been voluntary in 2021. The result was that at the time of the merger at Coop there were two schemes running alongside each other: one based on the collective bargaining agreement and one outside the collective bargaining agreement.'

That became very confusing, especially when PLUS joined with a policy based on yet another collective bargaining agreement. That is why Peters had no doubt after the merger: there had to be one regulation under which everyone would fall. And he succeeded. 'We don't know what hit us now, so much uniformity all of a sudden!'

Starting in early 2023, the HR team, supported by BexerHamstra, worked intensively to design the new system. One of the most significant changes—and one that some of the approximately 600 employees found daunting—was detaching from the CLA, which had ensured steady collective pay increases in recent years.

How was this handled? Peters explains:

“Everyone is now out of the CLA. For the lower-tier administrative roles, wage increases remain aligned with the CLA. However, for higher-level roles, salaries are more strongly linked to performance.” These employees will receive a smaller collective increase and a potentially larger individual raise based on their performance and salary band placement.

The good relationship with the Works Council was crucial, Peters says. After many preparatory sessions, the Works Council agreed to the plans at the end of October last year. All employees first received a letter in March of this year, in which their old arrangement and new arrangements were specified in detail and put side by side. 'There were to be no more surprises in that,' Peters said. 'Those letters were long and complicated. So we organized webinars on how to read that letter, as well as the first new payslip.'

The first paycheck and salary payment in June was followed by the new employment contract. That was immediately signed in large numbers, as all ambiguities had been cleared up before that.

Her HR team has had an intensive year and a half on it, Peters says. 'It was terribly hard work, but also really cool, because you build it all over again the way you want it. And the great thing is that the final result is measurable. There were no objections from employees. I'm really proud that we managed to pull this off with our small HR team. We are now reaping the benefits of it ourselves on a daily basis.'