Suma - A brief history

Origins; Hippies and Lentils

The business was started by a couple of friends in the early 1970’s to bring wholefoods to the North of England. Demand was huge. SUMA grew rapidly and was registered as a common ownership workers' co-operative in 1977.
We have been growing and changing ever since whilst maintaining the founding principles.

equality of wages for all jobs
multiskilling and job variety
personal development within the company
ethical business
100% employee owned and managed
democratic decision making processes
equal opportunities
environment friendly products
Common Ownership

(Common ownership means that while the present members control and use the assets of the business, they may not benefit from their liquidation.)

Growing Pains

For several years our culture was very informal. Members worked however they wished and took wages and stock similarly Meetings and decisions ‘just happened’. Hours were very long and many of members also lived in the same housing co-operative. SUMA was at the centre of alternative Leeds.

Wholefoods were very profitable, a booming market giving annual growth rates of 20%, all internally self funded
In 1979, a three-storey warehouse was purchased in the centre of Leeds riverside area. It seemed huge. The entire stock fitted into one corner of one floor. Within 18 months, the building was full.

General Meetings

For the first seven years a weekly general meeting tried to take all major decisions by consensus. The business closed for an afternoon while we argued and argued. Decisions taken one week were reversed the next. Individual members' power of veto blocked important developments. People often left meetings in tears.

In practice, most decisions were taken by individual jobholders with little co-ordination. Any member had the right to interfere in any area of the business at any time. Systems of payment, purchasing, deliveries, evolved as need dictated. Few members were experienced. They learned on the job.

An Unwitting Prophet?

By a process of serendipity, the SUMA of 15 years ago was the type of organisation which management gurus are now lauding as the new business paradigm:

Spontaneous discussion and decision taking.
Extreme empowerment of employees
Management structure was two-dimensional!
Trial and error and wild creativity were rife.
Only informal control systems existed.
Peer pressure was the only personnel control.
Corporate image was overwhelming!

It sounds like paradise to someone used to strict line management, but remember the Chinese saying, “May you live in interesting times.” Life in SUMA was often exhausting, emotionally addictive, socially destructive and all consuming.

The Cold Chill of Recession

By the middle 1980’s, the warehouse had become impossibly cramped. SUMA moved to a huge mill shed in Halifax, away from the alternative culture of Leeds and stood alone for the first time.
Customers dropped away. Workers found other jobs. The business was in a bad way. Radical changes were necessary but General Meetings no longer worked. A new management structure was designed, based on Viable Systems Model cybernetic theory.

Sectors, groups of members with common interests met weekly and sent delegates to the Hub committee to agree corporate decisions.
It worked fine for a few months but decisions still took too long. Hub delegates tried to force through decisions only to be constitutionally challenged.
Clearly members wanted management but were still loath to give management any power.

Elected Management

By 1993 our prime objective, to provide better jobs, was being fulfilled. But while we struggled to break even, other younger privately owned wholefood businesses grew rich.
Opportunities for business development were being missed. Supermarkets were killing the small shops, our core customers. Price wars erupted between wholesalers fighting over the survivors. Sales stagnated. SUMA was under threat.
Members’ commitment was still strong. When a disastrous flood destroyed 700 tons of stock, we worked round the clock to get SUMA trading again in only 10 days.
General Meetings were reinstated to consider management options and we elected a Management Committee (MC) from amongst the membership. The powers and remit of the MC were carefully designed.
Quarterly General Meetings decide strategic policy and the MC uses delegated authority to enact it by means of the company officers (Personnel, Finance, Training and Operations) and the departmental co-ordinators.
MC members meet weekly to review progress and issue instructions to the officers and co-ordinators. Then they return to their ‘day jobs’ as ordinary members. This is the safeguard against a clique of full time managers who could take over in their own interests.
The priority responsibility of the MC is to develop our annual Business Plan, which the General Meeting agrees. MC then develops, delegates and monitors Business Action plans for departments with delegated and timetabled targets on sales, finance, people and development. SUMA has agreed annual goals and targets at all levels.
Importantly, much of this process still happens by discussion
and consensus. Members take self-responsibility and collective authority is used only as a last resort.

Today

The management committee system has been a great success. Business plan targets are regularly achieved with, largely, controlled growth. The customer base is much wider. Overheads are under control. Profits are growing and available for re-investment. New business opportunities are routinely developed and implemented.
We now have a rolling annual business planning process with a strategic planning front end.
Most importantly, 90 well paid jobs with exceptional benefits are now safeguarded in the midst of the low wage, short time, minimal benefits job market which characterises much of modern northern England.

Investing in People

Further development of the business is being generated by heavy investments in people and technology, using the best of orthodox management ideas and the great potential of our 100% employee empowered structure.
SUMA jobs can be a wonderful mixture of initiative and creativity and manual and mental work. We have to avoid members getting stuck in routines, limited by competence, stress and lack of support; the normal small business situation.
Our Unique Selling Point, the SUMA customer service, is directly dependent on the quality of our workers.
To enhance the service, we are heavily investing in the best modern Information Technology to enable our members to work smarter, not harder, by further development of teambuilding and team working to achieve our business targets.
To this end, we achieved Investors in People accreditation in 1998. Only the third workers’ co-operative to be able to prove the quality of our organisational competence to customers, suppliers and the public.
SUMA is, at heart, a political statement that workers can successfully manage their own businesses without an owner/manager elite.

Working at Suma

Working at Suma is quite unlike normal employment. Our workers must be more self-motivated and take more initiative. SUMA departmental co-ordinators do not have an overseer role in the normal sense. Workers support each other in collective teams.
Working as an effective member of a co-operative, fulfilling daily produciton and taking part in the management and development of the business, is a new skill which all new members have to learn, whether they have been shopfloor or management previously. The business can only succeed when all members share this responsibility.
All Suma workers (member, employee or casual) are paid the same net daily wage plus allowances and time in lieu to reduce hours imbalances. It's a good wage for manual warehouse workers and the extra reflects the collective management element of our jobs. We also have a Profit Related Pay scheme, employee sales at cost, members' pensions etc etc. Wage costs overall are industry average. We share it out fairly.
Other benefits are far better than average. Maternity leave is six months on full pay. Leave for partners of new mothers is one month on full pay. Members can have unpaid leave of up to 12 months. We don’t have job sharing, we have job flexibility.
In return, we expect much more commitment. When the need arises, when customer orders are waiting, we are expected to work until the job is done!
Job variety is important. Our driving jobs are a mix of road and warehouse or office work. Office people will do manual work for at least one day a week. Members will mix management tasks with routine production duties. Most of us have done a far wider range of jobs within Suma than equivalents in other businesses. Members are expected to develop a portfolio of skills.
Multiskilling and equal pay underpins SUMA operations; allowing us to use labour and skills more efficiently to cope with the troughs and peaks of business. It enables SUMA members to cope with high workloads. It keeps people fresher and enthusiastic for longer and it allows recuperation from stress. Many a SUMA member spends time throwing sacks in the warehouse after leaving a high responsibility position and then re-entering the fray in a different job.

How do people start working at SUMA

It’s not easy. We get a lot of speculative applications and we can’t always reply to them all. Selection and review processes ensure only the best workers become regular SUMA employees.
There are three routes.

Casual work. We have a waiting list for general warehouse work. In peak periods we recruit temporary casuals. Some get contracts and eventually become members. Workers who have completed 12 months continuous employment can apply for trial membership.
Specialists. We often recruit HGV drivers and other technical specialists on set employee contracts. Most become members.
Trial Members. We recruit regularly. Advertisements in the local press generate hundreds of replies. We also receive many speculative applications.
Trial members must pass a three-month probationary work trial before commencing a six-month membership training and induction process in each department where they are assessed against the member job description for their suitability as collective managers and multiskilled workers.

Then we vote on their application for membership of the co-operative. Unsuccessful trial members may continue in their technical job and try again, in most cases.

Company Philosophy

SUMA is an ethical business. Our reputation is our greatest asset. SUMA workers can uphold or damage that asset.

Suma’s mission statement is...

To provide a high quality service to customers and a rewarding working environment for the workers, within a sustainable, ethical, co-operative business structure.
To strive to promote a healthier lifestyle by supplying ethical, eco-friendly, vegetarian products.

Does it work?

SUMA has grown consistently since 1974 and thrives in a fiercely competitive market by providing a better service to our customers and better jobs for our workers.
We continue to successfully develop new business options, innovative SUMA brand products and reach new and different customers.
At SUMA, changes are democratically agreed and supported by the membership, not imposed by management and paid for by the workforce.

Many companies say they want recruits to be good team members. We mean it.