Skillstories

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Business Drivers

We say “We see eyecare differently”, and we mean it. Good literacy skills are necessary to translate clinical and eyecare information in straightforward ways for our customers. Good numeracy skills mean we get all the technical elements of “dispensing” right first time and make our promotions and offers clear. We want our customers to understand everything they need to know about their vision and eyewear. In this way they become resourceful, and get the best out of their glasses and contact lenses.

Our Apprenticeship in Optical Retailing is a learning programme for every adult at work, whatever their age, qualifications or experience. We welcome each colleague as Apprentices because we know that our programme of work-based learning transforms their education and through this, gives support to our customers. Our Apprenticeship is valuable because:

• All Apprentices obtain an NVQ 2 & 3 and improved skills in literacy and numeracy
• The qualification is the framework for all other retail and management training
• It improves the literacy and numeracy of the local people that work for us
• Our local people use these skills to help their locals - our customers

We give our customers the highest level of clinical care, technical advice and fashion retailing we can. We do this because our training makes optics accessible to learn and easy to translate. We do this via the Apprenticeship, breaking down every element of the optical retail journey into key steps. Each step is taught and assessed until our Apprentices feel totally confident to step out on their own.

Implementation

We provide an Apprenticeship in Optical Retailing for all our Optical Advisers (OAs) – it’s not just “young people” that we call Apprentices. The Apprenticeship is comprised up of an NVQ, Key Skills and a Certificate in Adult Literacy & Numeracy.

We started out 8 years ago when there was nothing to help us. But we did it anyway. But what do you if it’s just you? Here’s our story: 1999 – We design a career path for our OAs in response to a debate about the lack of Apprenticeships available in our sector.

We start to run a “level 2 & 3” equivalent programme at our Academy in Birmingham. Because we ensure consistency and quality, we are accredited to run “customised awards” by Oxford & Cambridge Royal Society of Arts (OCR). We qualify our OA’s with a D&A and OCR certificate.

2002 – We work with National Contract Services – Learning & Skills Council (LSC) on a pilot scheme for Optical Retailing in a work based learning environment. We map the programme against Key Skills (literacy & numeracy) and NVQs to find a perfect match.

2003 – The Science Engineering Manufacturing Technologies Alliance (SEMTA) is asked to design and launch an NVQ 2 in Optical Retail. We join their Sector Steering Group (SSG) but quickly find that there would be minimal uptake unless the assessment methodology changed.

We work with City and Guilds (C&G) on a new way of assessment to suit our unique work based learning environment.

2004 – We apply for and get scheme approval.

2005 – We launch the NVQ level 2. We start working towards official Apprenticeships and join our SSG to design an NVQ L3

2006 – We change our recruitment process to identify basic skills of OAs on entry – this helps us diagnose literacy and numeracy needs early so we can start to help immediately.

We re-write all our workbooks to embed literacy and numeracy and amend all taught elements to reflect this. We re-train all our Tutors to deliver and support learning in literacy and numeracy and open a new computer suite to cater for the new e-learning elements.

Partners

To follow...

Impact

Sales
• Productivity increases of 86% as OAs progress through each learning threshold – “Trainee” to “Senior”
• An average £7 per colleague increase each glasses sale once Apprentices are trained in “Styleyes” – our unique frames choice process

Profitability
• 30% turnover rate as compared to 40% in the retail sector (source - Skills Smart Retail)
• A reduction in recruitment costs of £100k by improved selection using basic skills criteria
• 85% of Management appointments are now internal candidates, and incremental improvements are made year-on year
• Our ability to bring products to market quickly through ready-trained Apprentices who are “ready to trade”, .e.g. our leading edge varifocal lens technology and the “new generation” of contact lenses
• The fact that we can evaluate our training using trading measures of success

Employer Brand
• We have an industry leading programme – the only optical retailer to offer apprenticeships through our in house training programme
• The opportunity for Apprentices to get an NVQ and Literacy and Numeracy qualifications, simply by doing the job that they do
• The fact that all Apprentices are trained, irrespective of funding eligibility - the programme is embedded across England, Scotland and Wales and funded apprentices are a small percentage of the learners we train
• The programme is aligned with our career path - learners know how they can progress their career from the Apprenticeship to Advanced Apprenticeship level and then on to a clinical career and/or

Management
• The fact that working on the Apprenticeship programme is seen as career development in itself, represented by our support for the A1 Assessor role
• We are now into Phase 2 – mapping literacy &numeracy requirements of management roles and weaving individual learning plans into our potential manager programmes. We are also planning Phase 3 for this year, to gain scheme approval for a Warehousing & Distribution NVQ, with literacy and numeracy support. These approaches will help a further 200 Apprentices, and countless customers
• External recognition of our employee benefits through the National Training Award 2004 , People in Retail (Training and Career Development award) 2006 and finalists at the Edge Employer Awards 2006