How many times each week do you wish you had someone to reach out to, who knows your department and can offer advice based on personal experience at their co-op?

Peer resources and networking have always been an important part of our shared co-op culture. Occasionally, we meet in person or get together on a phone call and talk about shared opportunities and challenges. It’s great when we can interact in this way.

Still, day-to-day it can be difficult to connect with other co-ops to ask questions, discuss current events, and get the opinions of individuals who do similar work. We’ve launched the NCG Discussion Forums with this in mind.

Hundreds of co-op staff from across the country log in each week to connect with peers in the forum. In fact, the forums are now available to 11 different user groups that collectively average more than 1,000 visits each month! August 2022 was our biggest month ever with more than 1,500 visits from staff in our co-ops, and more than 18,000 page views. We hope to see this continue to grow as more people learn to access and use the tool.

What is everyone talking about?

• Store and operations managers chat about how to prep for store renovations
• Produce managers get ready for fall promotions
• Prepared foods managers explore ways to track waste in their departments
• Technology and POS staff share tips for self-checkout and online ordering

Those are just a few of the 2,500 topics posted over the last year!

Everyone with access to NCG.coop can access the forums related to their contact types. The forum can be used from any browser window, even on mobile devices and tablets. And unlike many places on the internet, this forum is a private, secure online community.

Co-op staff can read and respond to topics and upload documents to share. It’s intuitive to use and full of features — you can customize your profile, like and follow posts, win badges, or even subscribe to receive a daily or weekly digest of all the activity that’s taken place in the forum in your inbox.

If you’re already familiar with the forums, we encourage you to get in there and post a question or respond to one a co-op colleague has shared. Your active participation will help build this online community resource for everyone.

If this is all new to you, log in to NCG.coop, learn more, and join the conversation! Access the NCG Discussion Forums here.