Marks & Spencer has relaunched a career programme designed to help school leavers and graduates learn how to become retail leaders.
The retail leadership scheme, which teaches young people how to manage a store, had been halted for applicants so that it could be “reset”, Marks & Spencer said.
School-leavers and graduates on the retail leaders programme will be “hands-on from day one”, Marks & Spencer said, building the skills and experience needed to manage a store. By the end of the two- or three-year programme, “they will be managing a store of their own – the equivalent of running a business with a multi-million-pound turnover”.
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Six months after starting the programme, school leavers will have the opportunity to complete a level 6 – degree equivalent – apprenticeship. The retailer said it appreciated that further study wasn’t for everyone, so the apprenticeship qualification was completely optional.
After the first 12 months learning how to manage a store, graduates and school leavers will gradually take on more responsibility before assuming a management role within a further six months.
M&S said it would recruit 114 people to its scheme, compared with 29 this year. The new recruits will comprise 38 school leavers and 76 graduates.
The four-fold increase “reflects M&S’s focus on developing talent who want early accountability, can bring fresh perspectives, and build the skills to become future leaders in the business,” the FTSE 100 retailer said.
Chief executive Stuart Machin, who began his career on the shop floor, said he had taken a “personal interest” in the scheme. He said he had drawn on his own experience to ensure the programme “equipped talent with the skills they need to lead an M&S store of the future”.
He added: “I want others to benefit from the experience retail can offer, just like I did. And I want M&S to recruit its next generation of leaders, armed with the same knowledge, skills and entrepreneurial spirit I picked up from working my way up the retail ladder.” He said the schemes would help make M&S “a better business”.
Machin, who took over from Steve Rowe last year, has won praise for his part in turning round the 139-year-old retailer with a store rotation programme, which focuses on having the “right stores” in the “right place and right space”.
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