How REI Co-op’s Compass Group fosters dialogue between hourly workers and corporate leadership

Communicating change across business lines and audience segments is a delicate and nuanced process, especially when some of those segments include frontline employees.

Outdoor retailer REI Co-op understood this in 2022 when it developed the Compass Group as part of its larger “The Way Forward” initiative. The Compass Group is an employee advocacy program designed to help the co-op reimagine the employee experience for workers in the field and give hourly field employees a stronger voice in shaping their experience at REI.

Rachel Lum, director of the Co-op Compass Group, helps the organization determine the most important employee experience topics by gathering employee input and co-creating solutions with hourly frontline employees. “I think of my role as a translator, taking strategic initiatives and breaking them down so any employee can understand it well enough to contribute from their perspective, using their lived experience,” Lum said.

“The Compass Group is designed with one outcome in mind: Allowing hourly employees to feel that change is happening in collaboration with and because of their inputs,” Lum explained. “This program helps us make changes with employees by bringing them directly into solution brainstorming and because of employee feedback.”

Applications for the inaugural Compass Group opened in June 2022, when over 250 employees applied. Applicants were announced in August, gathering virtually for a meet and greet before meeting in person that September at the co-ops satellite office in Issaquah, Washington.

The guiding principles

Lum credits part of The Compass Group’s success to its focus on co-design and co-creation.

“My job is to set the stage to allow for co-design which leads to co-creation. It’s not for the employees to worry about,” she said. “They need to feel supported, so they can give us the honest and vulnerable feedback we need to get to where we want to go.” This philosophy is embedded throughout the Compass Group’s core guiding principles, which include these highlights:

• Trust is the foundation. “We believe with strong relationships and trust, every member’s voice can carry equal weight. So, we acknowledge the dynamics of our diverse forum and use an equity-centered approach to design our discussion,” says REI.
• Cooperatively design outcomes. “We discuss topics that can adapt and shift, rather than reactive to fully or mostly formed ideas. We have business partners at our discussions because their expertise helps us co-create realistic and applicable insights.”
• Clear, credible and transparent. “We will communicate and create content that has a purpose, shares our successes as much as our failures and keeps the voice of our employees at the center. Our communications will be accessible to everyone, only adjusted for the audience and delivery methods.”

Meeting and collaborating with business partners

Each meeting topic has a specific business partner, such as the HQ team, field operations team or even a group of leaders within the org, that owns the work associated with the topic and drives impact. For example, when the Compass Group discussed development paths, the Talent Management team from HR was brought on as a business partner because it owns learning and development within the co-op.

“Our business partners are responsible for considering Compass member insights in their design-making,” explained Lum. “They ensure follow-through on the work and their commitments to the Compass Group and the whole Co-Op.”

While these business partners would be doing the same work regardless, having the Compass Group as a resource to share insights helps makes their work better.

Here’s how business partners engage with a topic before, during and after each Compass Group meeting:

• Before the meeting, the business partner prepares Compass Group members by creating materials to brief Compass members on what they need to know.
• During the meeting, the business partner is expected to participate, communicate and listen.
• After the meeting, the business partner is responsible for considering Compass Group member insights in their work.

“Just like the best trails, we know our path to success won’t be a straight line,” Lum said. “Along the way, we will work collaborative to ensure the voices of our hourly employees are influential.”

How it’s going

Two years into the Compass Group, Lum shared that the group’s work has directly led to 25 changes in the way the co-op works. “This means that the insights we’ve gathered caused us to add, remove, or alter our approach to an existing program, policy or project,” she said. “That’s huge!

“The impacts of these changes are real, and have positively influenced the work of teams across the co-op. It’s helping us build momentum and expand our reach as the program matures. We know there is enthusiasm, and we believe it will only continue to grow as we continue to deliver meaningful results for our hourly employees.”

Join REI Sr. Manager of Communications Nicole Bernard  at Ragan’s Employee Experience Conference in Nashville, when she’ll share more about how internal communications partnered with The Compass Group to navigate a news platform launch, layoffs and other change messages with employees at the center of it all.

REI are members of Ragan’s Communications Leadership Council. Learn more about joining here.