Developing capability

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, services 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 throughout their Boots careers. All our work is designed to help our people become the best they can be, based on the firm belief that releasing talent drives performance.

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 community 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, Registered Technicians and Dispensers supporting them with their Continuing Professional Development (CPD). This CPD activity involved off-job protected time focusing on development areas identified by the individuals themselves as knowledge gaps that would make the biggest difference to them in their workplace.

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 they have.

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 Office 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. One of the areas we have focused the development of e-learning modules around for our store and Support Office colleagues is increasing the knowledge of spotting signs and symptoms of cancer and how to support those affected by cancer. This training has been developed in partnership with our charity partners Macmillan Cancer Support. Over 2000 people have already completed these modules. Meanwhile, the Boots Academy now offers a range of courses and a library of self-learning materials for our non store-based colleagues.

Attracting young talent or just raising students' awareness of the wide range of job and career opportunities has long been a feature of our external educational partnerships. A big theme currently is supporting the Government’s campaign to get more young people into the workplace by providing opportunities for young people to experience our workplace and be inspired about the breadth of opportunities that are available to them and gain some personal learning.

Last year we ran Work Inspiration Week when 100 students attended an inspiring programme in our Nottingham support office. It was such a success, we’ve repeated it this year to include other areas of the Alliance Boots’ wider group: Boots Opticians, Boots International, BCM, as well as teams from some of the Group’s corporate functions.

This year, we worked with Business in the Community's RISE programme which supports young 'Care Leavers' in Nottingham to enter the world of work - with great results!

At the same time, we are developing an online toolkit for use in our stores so all our stores can join us in making ‘Work Inspiration Week’ a national phenomena. We anticipate hosting 3,000 young people this way in 2011/12.

We’re also sharing our approach with our suppliers to encourage them to take part as well to maximise the impact.

As we develop our own internal talent through the two year Boots Retail Talent Programme (BRTP), each cohort is given a CSR initiative to support. Our current first year BRTP participants have designed and delivered ‘Work Inspiration’ and our current second year BRTP participants have funded, designed and delivered their own initiative through Young Enterprise providing an Enterprise Day for 72 students.

Working with Education Business Futures, we are advertising their e-mentoring service on our career pathways website and encouraging our employees to sign-up, particularly targeting people on our pipeline and placement programmes.

This year Boots UK launched a new 18-month Boots Business Apprenticeship Programme for post A level students, which provides an opportunity to gain invaluable experience in the workplace whilst learning how the retail industry works. The programme includes placements in various business functions throughout the Nottingham Support Office, as well as an opportunity to gain in-store experience. We are also providing funds and full support to Programme students, to study for a Higher Apprenticeship in Business Management - equivalent to a foundation degree level. Our Boots Business Apprenticeship Programme complements our existing work with Business in the Community, Work Inspiration Week, Young Enterprise and our range of employment, education and training for young people and existing 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.