Charity hampers created by the students

Work experience at Southern Co-op has been described as eye opening and mind blowing by students wrapping up their time with the regional co-operative.

In a nine-week period (15 May – 21 July) Southern Co-op hosted 128 work experience students across its retail stores and head office. In the same period. Southern Co-op also welcomed 10 supported internships in its stores.

Some of the students at the head office were asked to write up a short summary of their time at Southern Co-op. Below is what they had to say.

Zoe

Before starting work experience at the Southern Co-op head office, I was intrigued to see how all the different departments worked. Throughout the two weeks I have spent here, I have enjoyed marketing, the architecture part of Trading and Formats and wellbeing. But most of all I have enjoyed meeting all the people working and others here on work experience. I have been pleasantly surprised by customer services and risk and legal. These two weeks have opened my eyes to jobs I did not know existed.

Ruby

Work experience at Southern Co-op has made me realised what actually goes on behind the scenes of the store and there is so much more to it. While with Southern Co-op, I have had the opportunity to go around and see what it’s like in all the different departments. Personally, customer service and risk and legal were my favourite. The staff were very welcoming which made my time here even more enjoyable. I also enjoyed making the new e-learning for people in the future with Kelly and Leigh.

Patryck

I’ve enjoyed End of Life services the most as I liked the way the team worked and how they made it fun whilst doing her job. I also enjoyed risk/legal, learning how the team deals with things such as property damage and making sure kids aren’t served underage.

Maja

My experience at Southern Co-op has been a lot! However I have enjoyed this experience because it gave me a brief perspective of the office life. I really enjoyed the finance and End of Life departments because of the spreadsheets and how their daily day in the life of an office worker is like.

I really loved the coffee machines and the beautiful designs of each building. Also the food trucks were so nice. The food was delicious. I am really glad that I was able to join Southern Co-op for one week!

Louie

Before work experience started, I was looking forward to seeing if an office job appealed to me and if I would like to do an office job in the future. This work experience has really changed my mind on office jobs and I have really enjoyed myself. Some of my favourite departments were customer services and risk and legal. These have really blown my mind, I have also enjoyed meeting new people and speaking to employees and my other work experience peers. This has really opened my eyes and I have had such a great time.