Retail Institute National Certificate for Supermarkets

The Retail Institute is the Industry Training Organisation for the retail and retail related wholesale and distribution industries. The Retail Institute’s experts have been working in partnership with supermarket chain Progressive Enterprises to develop a nationally recognised supermarket retailing qualification, to complement the company’s existing in-house training programmes.

The challenge for Progressive Enterprises, one of New Zealand’s largest employers, was to provide all supermarket employees with the opportunity to increase their retail knowledge and skills. Any new training initiative had to add value to the stores operations and be simple to implement.

Working with the Retail Institute provided Progressive Enterprises with the unique opportunity to create national qualifications for the supermarket industry, by developing a fundamental retailing course that would teach employees’ transferable skills. Qualification success would give workers the confidence to continue training and develop their career in the wider retail or other industries.

Stage one of the proposed qualification was to roll out a pilot scheme in eight stores nationwide for 18 weeks. The Retail Institute provided a team of training advisers to work with store managers to develop the related training resources with their staff.

The supermarket sector has a diverse workforce with a range of existing learning levels. The pilot scheme made sure the programme was accessible to people with different levels of literacy skills. The course materials were polished and updated using the results from the pilot scheme with literacy and numeracy issues addressed by embedding literacy and numeracy learning strategies for trainees in the final version.

The pilot reinforced the need for complete support of any training, whether workplace based or not, from all levels of management. The most successful stores are those where the manager has also completed the training and is actively involved in assisting and mentoring their staff and recognise supporting learning in the workplace as a central aspect of their work.

The end result of the pilot process was the development of the National Certificate in Retail (Level 2) qualification for supermarkets. The qualification provides a broad overview of the retail environment and involves the achievement of unit standards in customer service, processes and systems, selling and stock control. Training for the certificate focuses on tasks common to all retailers and is carried out in the workplace, thereby encourages learning ‘on the job’.

In August of 2009 the National Certificate in Retail (Level 2) qualification for supermarkets was made available to all 150 Progressive supermarkets. It is used as part of their employee induction programme. In the first nine months of the programme more than 500 trainees had successfully completed the first stage of this programme.

The Retail Institute and Progressive Enterprises were nominated for a ‘Tomorrow’s Workforce Award’ for developing these nationally recognised qualifications for supermarket staff. The award is presented by the Equal Employment Opportunities Trust and recognises innovative responses to tomorrow’s employment challenges.

WEBSITE: www.retailinstitute.org.nz