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Arctic Co-operatives does well by doing good

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This article was published 12/03/2024 (566 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A few years ago, Darlene Sass was the general manager at Issatik Co-op in Whale Cove, Nunavut, part of the Arctic Co-operatives Limited service federation. It was a busy, ever-changing job and she thrived in it.

“I looked after the hotel, the co-op and the fuel station, the gas bar,” she says. “Every day you go to work and you don’t know what to expect.”

Eventually, Sass had to move south to Winnipeg for family reasons. For a while she took a receptionist job at another firm, but jumped at the chance to rejoin Arctic Co-operatives in its Winnipeg home office.

Seven years on, she is still bubbling with enthusiasm about her job.

“They have Welcome Wednesdays where everybody’s welcome to come down and meet the new people. There’s a game that goes on and so every week it’s something different. Coming back here is like coming home,” says Sass.

“The staff here, and how they support the teams up north, is really impressive,” she says. “What happens at the top definitely shows through the whole building. Leadership, I think, is a big part of this.”

Arctic Co-operatives is owned and controlled by 33 co-operative businesses – dealing in everything from groceries and petroleum to hotels and Inuit and Dene art – throughout the three Arctic territories and Saskatchewan. By pooling their resources, Arctic Cooperatives gets the most product for the least amount of money.

Jack Ediger, vice-president of operations, knows that firsthand. “I initially was district support advisor with Arctic Co-ops and then kind of moved into different roles throughout the years,” he says. “And so I do still get an opportunity to get into the Arctic and it’s truly a gift to be able to travel to the North.”

Ediger comes from a background in retail, including some of the major supermarket chains (“I like to refer to myself as a can-slammer”), so he has an appreciation of the effects of inflation on individual food budgets, particularly in the North. By getting member co-ops profitable and returning those profits through patronage dividends, Arctic Co-operatives is nudging its member owners’ finances a little higher.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever worked with an organization with such a long-term, tenured staff,” says Ediger. “So I think they get our ‘why’ – and when our staff really understand our why and the great things that we do, then they tend to stay with us for a long period of time.”

To make sure that employees stick around, Arctic Co-operatives makes its home office headquarters as welcoming as possible.

“We do things like food trucks, we celebrate different events throughout the year – everything from Indigenous Days or Pride Month or whatever it may be,” he says. “We try to do something for our staff on a regular basis.”

Arctic Co-operatives is also alive to its employees’ work-life balance, offering a hybrid work model that lets staff work from home two days a week.

Ediger is mindful of the difference between corporate and co-operative cultures. “Although the financial side is very important, it’s also very important to have that balanced approach of concern for community and concern for staff,” Ediger says. “And that little piece of membership is ownership, right?”