Learning and development

We continue to recognise the importance of training and developing our people, which enables them to fulfil their potential at work and helps to make Boots UK a great place to work. We know how much our customers value the quality of the products, service and advice when they visit our stores and this demands a world-class approach to training and development.

We make a significant investment in the development of a range of training resources and materials aimed at helping our people to become the best that they can be, from the moment they join us for their induction. In addition to helping new colleagues feel part of our team and learning the relevant basic job skills, we have in place various training programmes to build the level of confidence and capability that will enable them to progress their career with us and enjoy the great satisfaction of making a huge difference to the lives of the customers who come into our stores.

We're continually at the forefront of training for healthcare professionals, creating a range of innovative initiatives that are widely viewed as the benchmark for retail pharmacy. This is regularly confirmed by the results achieved, independent assessments and, most importantly, customer feedback. This year, we have put additional investment into developing our pharmacists and registered technicians supporting them with their Continued Professional Development (CPD). Our experienced support office based teams develop and maintain a huge library of courses, workshops, self-directed learning and e-learning materials for all our colleagues in whatever role.

We've a clear development framework for our people to support them in their career development. We offer fast track development schemes that help both internal people and graduates new to the organisation to progress into management roles either in store or our support offices and we are immensely proud of our impressive track record on training and development. We continue to build on the success of our e-learning system, giving access to a range of exciting training materials for all our store-based colleagues, enabling people to access learning at a time that suits them. Meanwhile, the Boots Academy now offers a range of courses and a library of self-learning materials for our non-store based colleagues.

Our appreciation of just how much our customers and our people benefit from providing great training and development means that we will continue to create and update our resources, building on our ambition of not only championing our customers right to feel good, but also helping our people as they enjoy the personal growth that comes with learning.