Many cooperatives want members to engage more, and seek to increase input, communication, discussion, and “sense of ownership.”   This short memo suggests the best way to achieve this is to reverse the goal, and find ways for the cooperative to engage more with members’ lives and the things that matter to them.  In general, a plan for increasing member engagement should find an activity that will have broad appeal to members’ existing motivations, increase their ability to do the activity, and build triggers and rewards to cue and incentivize action. 

 This handbook walks worker owners and cooperative developers through the process of laying the groundwork for, creating, and implementing systems of accountability and evaluation in small to medium sized worker cooperatives.

Editable versions of the toolkit's appendices can be found here.

The absence of supervisors, who are charged with immediately identifying and addressing problem performance, makes the periodic occurrence of worker evaluations critical in a collective. This 1-page document outlines the importance of evaluations and provides tips on performing evaluations effectively. 

Sample employee handbook for a worker cooperative. Provided in a word document for easy modification for your own cooperative.