A day at Les-Tilleuls.coop

Hello everyone! I'm Caroline, back-end developer freshly arrived at Les-Tilleuls.coop! Today was my first general assembly (GA) and the first of the year 2019. Here is my feedback on this special day.

Les-Tilleuls.coop being a SCOP (go here to learn more), we make decisions together in a democratic way. Each employee can make proposals or give his or her opinion on different areas. Once a month, all the cooperators meet at the office in Lille to make various decisions related to legal news, the budget or recruitment. Each cooperator has one vote representing one vote, it is not a dictatorship here.

The office is busier than usual. We are from a dozen people to about thirty in some minutes. We take a breakfast together, we discuss then we make a Tetris with the armchairs so that everyone can return in the meeting room.

Tetris with chairs.

The agenda is established a few days before and sent to each cooperator who can contribute directly. If someone has a proposal for a tool, an idea, you shouldn't hesitate to add it and to present it to everyone during the GM. We discuss the different points, give our opinion and then we vote by a show of hands (for, against, abstention).  

Olivier (our CFO) started this first GM of the year with the balance sheet of the turnover of 2018. It was an opportunity to talk about customer relations, the strong and weak points, to get advice on processes to improve.

An important aspect in the life of our cooperative concerns recruitment. We discuss candidates' profiles by email or on Slack, we vote on hiring them together at the GM. During a GM, we can also suggest a candidate and then vote to decide if we dig the lead or not, and what offer we can make. We also review current hires and the marketing strategy for future hires (we're hiring, come on! <3 ).

Then, we present the different prospects, the current demands of the client, what his needs are and we plan which cooperator will be available and the most suitable for each mission. We then vote on all the other proposals concerning the life of the scop, such as the budget for an event or the implementation of a new reform.

It is 12:30, we end the GM with the presentation of the different workshops planned for the afternoon. We take the opportunity to work together on internal projects, on Open Source contributions or to train for conferences. 

At the end of the day, a report of the GM is sent to all and we fix a date for the next monthly GM. We celebrate the end of the GM with a good meal in a nice brewery. A convivial moment to share with the cooperators of the different offices :)

Several groups were formed in the afternoon to work on different internal projects, Open Source projects, preparations for training or upcoming meetups. This afternoon I followed a video-conference training on Blackfire given by Christophe Dujarric.

I then finished my day on the writing workshop for the blog. Another busy day at the cooperative. See you soon!