People Support Co-op is a feminist, sociocratic workers’ co-operative established in 2021 by three founder member directors. We describe ourselves as barefoot co-op development advisors, having formed out of the first Barefoot Co-op Development Programme. We draw on our many years of experience in the worker co-op movement to offer practical HR and governance advice, training and support to nurture co-operative systems and relationships.

We share a core set of values:

• We believe workers should democratically own and control their workplaces. This is why we are a collective-governance workers co-op, committed to the values and principles of the co-operative movement.
• We believe in collective ownership and non-hierarchical governance systems in which all members have an active voice. 
• We believe in anti-oppressive, co-operative HR, which for us stands for Human Relationships, and we reject the deeply-problematic notion of human beings being resources in exploitative capitalist systems.
• We reject the capitalist norms of performance-related pay and individual reward – we support flat-play structures and valuing all work equally. 
• All our current members are vegan and share a vision of a world free of animal and human exploitation, where the natural world is not exploited for profit. We choose not to offer our services to organisations directly engaged in animal agriculture, such as dairy, meat or fishing co-ops.
• We believe cooperation is stronger than competition. Wherever possible we choose to support the solidarity economy by purchasing goods and services from other co-operatives and social justice organisations.  
• We stand in solidarity with people and communities experiencing oppression, exclusion and injustice. We use our time and resources to support organisations working for social, racial, economic and environmental justice, including through donations from our 1% Fund and through the provision of free-of-charge support where we can offer this.
• We recognise that social and environmental injustice are inseparable. Climate change is a global crisis and we play our own small part to reduce our impact on the world around us wherever we can. We reject support for fossil fuel extraction and other practices that perpetuate or accelerate climate change.

We choose to work with co-ops, community businesses, activist groups and other organisations with a social justice agenda. We want to help like-minded organisations navigate the complexities of employment law to create a co-operative and collaborative work environment based on shared power and accountability, mutual support and solidarity.