Suma Wholefoods

WHOLEFOOD wholesaler Suma takes pride in its billing as “one of the two most radical employers in Europe”.

That was the description applied to the Elland-based co-operative by Rainer Schluter, director of Co-operatives Europe when he addressed an international audience in Brussels earlier this year.

Suma, based at Lowfields Business Park, has 150 employees, pays 66% above market rate wages and usually gives its workers an extra month’s pay as a Christmas bonus.

It also has no executive management, no chief executive and no managing director – not even a permanent chairman. Every worker gets the same net wage and can work in every area of the business.

Brand co-ordinator Nicola Roebuck said: “Suma takes ‘diamonds in the rough’ – able people who have missed out in the education lottery – and propels them into creative and high power positions within months of recruitment.

“It also enables professionals to mix manual work into their mental work.”

Said Nicola: “It should be happy hippy chaos, shouldn’t it? But this last year of recession, we have recruited, grown into new markets, developed ‘world first’ new products, increased our training investment, bought expensive new technology, increased our wages by 5% and paid a thumping good bonus.”

Like John Lewis, Suma is 100% employee-owned. However, Suma goes one stage further because its shopfloor workers run the business and decide how customers will be serviced.

“We take the big strategic decisions in members’ meetings,” said Nicola. “We elect non-executive directors from among us to watch over our team co-ordinators and professional adviser and make sure the big plans get carried out.

“But largely, we rely on every Suma member being self-managing and working as a member of a co-operative team whatever job they are doing that day. At a stroke, our executive and supervisory management costs fall to a fraction of our competitors. Those savings make up the premium we pay ourselves.”