Professional development in the retail industry tends to happen in an ad hoc fashion but BWG Foods says its new Academy will change all that. Peter Donohoe, group HR director, BWG Group, talks to Maev Martin about aligning their brand strategy with a people strategy.
On 6 November BWG Foods launched what it describes as a ‘pioneering employee professional development initiative’, entitled the BWG Academy, which is designed to provide a wide range of self-development and support programmes for over 22,000 retail employees across BWG Foods’ SPAR, EUROSPAR, Londis, MACE and XL store networks.
BWG Academy’s dedicated centre is located in Dublin’s North City Business Park and features a practical training facility, which includes a high-spec kitchen, food preparation and food display fittings, along with auxiliary study rooms for theory education.
Structured support
According to Retail Ireland, the retail sector employs over 280,000 people across the country, representing 14% of total national employment.
The sector contributes a very significant 23% of the State’s tax returns, and is therefore critical to the Irish economy, particularly in rural economies where 70% of Ireland’s retail jobs are held.
However, despite the significance of the sector to the national economy, it is very common for someone with little work experience and no third level education to enter the retail sector and for their career progression to be hamstrung by a lack of support services or requirements for specific skills and qualifications that they were never afforded access to.
“Over the years, professional development in the retail industry generally hasn’t been consistent or structured and we wanted to introduce a people-centric approach across our various brands,” says Donohoe.
“We want to create the leaders of the future in the convenience retail sector and we can only do that if we develop the talents of our team and give them a structured career path.”
He points out that while, strategically, technology has been a buzz word in retail, in the longer term people will be of greater strategic importance.
“You can copy an IT programme or replicate various technologies, but we believe that it will be difficult for our competitors to copy this BWG Academy approach,” he says.
“We know about the increasing prevalence of AI and machine learning in our industry, but people want to buy from people. A personal service is still important, especially around food. Technology will have a key role to play, but people will still be at the heart of retail.”
200 trained to date
The BWG Academy was 18 months to two years in the making.
BWG had been engaging with its retailers about the project 12 months before the launch, with the training centre opening in September, and the official launch taking place on 6 November.
Donohoe says that they have already trained 200 people since September.
“Most of the programmes so far are for deli managers and business owners and the feedback we have received to date has been very positive,” he says.
“The focus is on practical skills in areas such as food safety and profitability in deli, and we will roll out other programmes, from basic deli skills to fruit and veg, butchery skills and bakery skills. We will cover all aspects of grocery retail.”
Donohoe says that the BWG council members from each of BWG’s brands have completed training programmes in the Academy and are very supportive of the initiative.
“We can train 12 people per day and some of our programmes are half or full day programmes, so you could have 24 retailers attending a half day deli skills programme,” he says.
“The plan is to train people from a Monday to Thursday each week.
BWG employs 22,000 people across its brands, so we will have no difficulty filling our training slots, and we already have a waiting list of retailers who want their staff to avail of our training programmes!”
A grocery retail first
A lot of the training in retail happens at store level, but learning on the job is challenging.
“What we have done is create a separate site away from the busy retail environment to create a proper training and learning environment for operatives and managers,” he says.
“We are the first grocery retailer in Ireland to introduce an off-site, purpose-built, state-of-the-art facility dedicated to training retailers and retail employees. We have six people working in the Academy, which is managed by qualified chef John Poole, who is passionate about food and about education.
He previously worked as a chef in a number of restaurants and hotels, so he is the perfect fit for the Academy.”
Recruitment service for retailers
The Academy isn’t just a practical training facility – it has many strings to its bow. One of them being the recruitment service that it offers to retailers. “We have provided a technology solution for retailers whereby retailers send us their roles and we advertise those roles for the shops on our technology platform, which is an applicant tracking system,” says Donohoe.
“The applicants then go directly to the store and the store then manages the recruitment process at local level. The aim of this system is to professionalise BWG’s approach to recruitment and it is a good way for our retailers to select people for the roles they require. In a marketplace that is now at full employment this is important.”
BWG have received over 40,000 applicants for positions since they introduced this service in April 2019.
E-learning and gamification
The Academy also operates an e-learning facility, which is used by all of BWG’s retailers to train their employees in areas such as food safety, as well as offering butchery, fruit and veg, bakery and deli online training for retailers and employees.
“This allows people to get up to speed quickly and efficiently with what is required to operate successfully and professionally in our stores,” says Donohoe.
BWG also launched gamification earlier this year.
“This is training through gaming,” he says. “It is an online game that you play on a tablet – you go around a store and you are given tasks to do in the store and you get points for performance as you go along.
We believe that this is a completely unique approach to training in retail and a number of our retailers are now using this in their business.
We are supported by Spar International, who worked with us in developing it, and we then deployed it in our own business. We have over 100 licences for the programme operating at the moment and that is growing.
It is a different way of engaging with the millennials that work in our Group, as gamification is central to a lot of their experiences in life.”
Earn and learn
Finally, there is a formal educational aspect to the Academy. Through the BWG Academy, retail employees will gain access to accredited ‘Earn and Learn’ programmes, such as the Retail Supervision Apprenticeship by Retail Ireland Skillnet.
“We have over 32 people, the largest number from any retailer, on the new two-year Apprenticeship Programme, which was launched by Retail Ireland this year,” says Donohoe.
“You can earn and learn in retail and not have the financial pressure of going to college. You can work in our stores and, if you are highly motivated, secure a high level qualification.
A lot of people that come into retail may not have had the opportunity to go to college, so we are trying to give those people an opportunity to educate themselves, right up to masters level.”
Working with Letterkenny IT, which they have been doing since 2013, BWG run two-day supervisory programmes focused on core managerial aspects of a job. “Our two-day supervisory programme that we run with Letterkenny IT is an industry certificate that enables those who do it to take the next step into the apprenticeship supervisory programme, which is a two-year programme,” he says.
“Once they do that, they can complete a two-year retail degree programme, and they can then progress to a masters qualification. We have 15 people who have started their degree programme this year and over the years in excess of 120 people have completed the programme.
Through these partnerships with Letterkenny IT and Retail Ireland, BWG Foods will support retailers and their employees on the journey to gaining recognised qualifications, all the way to degree and masters level.”
Creating future leaders
Peter Donohoe has been with BWG Foods for 12 years, having previously worked in HR and in a variety of other roles, such as sales and operations, with Glanbia, so he has an in-depth knowledge of both the food industry.
“The retail industry is becoming very much a food service business and it is now hard to separate retail from food service, so that needs to be a major focus for retailers when it comes to training and skills development,” he says.
“People are more discerning and knowledgeable around food and they want more and more choice. That means that expertise in fresh food is very important and is therefore a key focus area for us in the Academy.”
Donohoe is keen to point out that, while there are many worthwhile HR initiatives in businesses across all sectors, including retail, the BWG Academy is about implementing a broader people strategy, with the recruitment, training, education and staff development aspects co-existing under one umbrella.
“We have plans to broaden the scope of the topics covered by our training programmes beyond specific skills and educational areas, such as safety in the workplace, positive lifestyle management and stress management, to cover the likes of health and wellness for employees, including mental health,” he says.
“At the Londis conference in October, we announced a Customer Service Leadership programme for Londis retailers and that is a key initiative of the Academy, so the Academy’s people strategy is closely linked, and will continue to be closely linked, to the brand strategy.
This is about building great retail leaders for the future, and ensuring that Ireland remains at the cutting edge of convenience retail in Europe and further afield.”
© 2019 Checkout – your source for the latest Irish retail news. Article by Donna Ahern. Click subscribe to sign up for the Checkout print edition.
