RetailT


learndirect team based in Leicester. The partnership brings together learndirect’s experience of improving people’s skills with McDonald’s commitment to provide its employees with the very best training and development opportunities. The deal will see learndirect work with more than 4,000 McDonald’s apprentices every year, who achieve around 6,000 maths and English qualifications. The functional skills curriculum is contextualised to real-life scenarios and can be accessed online 24-hours a day, to suit the flexible working patterns of McDonald’s staff. Jez Langhorn, senior vice president and chief


people officer at McDonald’s UK, said: “Our people are an absolute priority at McDonald’s and it is important to us that they get the opportunity to fulfil their potential, to gain the valuable skills required not just to do their jobs with us, but to successfully develop their careers for the future. “In our business, we want people with an appetite


to learn and develop and last year invested over £43 million in training. The development of our people is a fundamental ingredient to the success of our business and partnering with learndirect allows us to make sure access to key qualifications is there for those who need it most.” Learndirect is also involved in the McDonald’s


‘How to Get Hired’ programme, aimed at helping young people get into work. As part of the pilot sessions being held at McDonald’s restaurants in Brixton, Nottingham and Swindon, learndirect is providing experienced staff to help young people put together and improve their CVs to help equip them with the skills to make a career in retail now and into the future. Suzana Lopes, senior vice president of sales


and marketing at learndirect, added: “McDonald’s customers expect quick, efficient service and a high- quality product and it’s vital that their employees are equipped to deliver these high standards. We know, with our experience and history, we can work with them to improve the skills of their workforce and, by extension, their customers’ experience too.” The training firm is also involved in the


McDonald’s ‘How to Get Hired’ programme, aimed at helping young people get into work. As part of the pilot sessions held at McDonald’s restaurants in Brixton, Nottingham and Swindon, learndirect is providing experienced staff to help young people put together and improve their CVs to help equip them with the skills to forge a successful career in retail now and into the future.


www.retailtechnology.co.uk


echnology


WORKFORCE ROUNDUP


Retail Technology highlights the most important challenges facing retailers when it comes to optimising their workforces today


CUSTOMERS STRATEGY


Prioritise human interaction


1,000 Over 80% of leading and average-performing retailers admit that their


workforces have become more important in the past three years for enabling an


optimal customer experience (RSR Research, March 2014)


TRAINING


Invest in well trained and knowledgable staff


Shoppers find product knowledge (73%), product


selection help (71%), category knowledge (69%) and


product alternatives help (68%) as “somewhat” to “extremely” important


(eXperticity, November 2013) OPERATIONS OPTIMISE Make sure there are


enough staff to meet peaks in customer demand


1,000 US consumers


identified the biggest problem encountered during store shopping experiences was ‘not being able to find a store associate’ (Wharton,


Pennsylvania University and Verde Group, 2014)


MODERNISE Update workforce


management (WFM) systems to optimise scheduling,


payroll and labour standards


Almost three quarters (74%) of 200 retail executives


respondents said they do not have highly efficient WFM


operations processes in place (Retail TouchPoints, July 2013)


TECHNOLOGY MOBILE


An increasing number of ‘mobile-savvy’ millennials


are entering the workforce 52% of retailers planned


to invest more in mobile workforce technology


than they did in 2012, with 18% intending to spend “significantly more” (JDA


Software and Workforce Insight, June 2013)


AUTOMATION


Investigate advanced time and attendance systems


A retailer with $5 billion (£2.9bn) in annual revenue


and 60,000 employees could save $2.5 million ((£1.5m) a year by implementing a


time and attendance system that simplifies time entry


administration (Oracle white paper, January 2014)


Spring/Summer 2014


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