agr sector focus group - retail - warwick blogs · mitchells and butlers offer graduate schemes in...

AGR Sector Focus Group - Retail

Agenda

10am Arrival

10.30am Start & Introduction to the day

10.35am Welcome Speech – Simon Roberts (Boots - Chief Operating Officer)

11.00am Workshop 1

11.45am Speed Networking

1.30pm Lunch

2.00pm Workshop 2

2.45pm Closing Speech – Carl Gilleard (plus raffle winner announced!!)

3.15pm Finish

Workshop Locations:

Working in Partnership: Room F8

Placements and Internships: Main Auditorium

Innovation, Ethics & Sustainability: Room S9

Power of Retail: Room S10

Speed Networking

Please refer to the back of your badge to establish

which organisation your speed networking journey

will begin at….

Welcome toWorking in Partnership

Simon Pollard

Danielle McQueen

Rachael PreeceGemma Hurt

Working in Partnership

EmployerCareers

Advisors

StudentSweet spot

EmployerFacts

� Budgets� Number of Universities� Team sizes

How we decide what Universities to target� ROI existing Graduates

� Offers vs. spend on campus� Calibre – performance of current Grads from those Uni’s

� Proactiveness of Careers Services� Competitors presence � Entry Requirements� Tiered approach

Students� Perception of Retail on campus?

� Long hours� Low pay� Limited career opportunities� Basic, mundane work

� Why did you choose Retail?� Fast pace, competitive industry� Versatile breadth of career opportunities� Previous retail experience� Customer facing� Competitive salaries

Students

� Did you use your Careers Service?�50:50�Strong employability support/information

�Generally a lack of retail specific information

Careers Services was great- they advised me on my application and how to prepare for

online tests and Assessment Centre

Not well set up to help beyond banking, law or management consultancy

I found my careers services useful for thinking about applications but they were not particularly wised up on retail

The careers service tried pretty hard to direct me towards Finance or Investment Banking

Our Careers Services never suggested Retail organisations

I gained advice and read feedback from former students who’d applied for jobs and had interviews from Retail organisations

Careers Service� Combined objective: employability

and destination statistics!

� Central point of contact for each company� Educate and inform i.e. campaign stats� Timely event preparation – Long Term Plans� Being open to creative solutions� Regular year-round contact

Working Session- Creative Solutions!

� Chicken & Egg� What comes first? � Induct new companies on campus� Guaranteed attendance

� Usual Suspects� Limited presence and resource� Structure and scheduling of events

� What went wrong?� Perceptions: thinking beyond your

experience� Structure of your teams� Maintaining your knowledge

EmployerCareers

Advisors

Student

Sweet spot

Continuous Cycle

Questions or Comments?

The Real Deal with Industrial Placements and Internships

The aim of this session is to provide you with an insight into the importance organisations and students are placing on these types of opportunities .

You will discover how key employers are engaging with people as early as possible in order to help them secure top talent for the future.

Aims & Objectives

Some Introductions

Ashley Hever

Becky Wareham

Helen Boon

Helen Alkin

Lorcan Seery

Emma Ward

Lizzie Brock

Surprising Statistics?..........

� 16 Retail organisations were questioned and 13 responses received

� 11 out of 13 offer some sort of Placement/Internship opportunity

� Opportunities range from 12 months to 6 months/summer and shorter insights

� Across the 11 organisations, that take placements/interns, more than 500 opportunities exist annually

� With the exception of short insights ALL other opportunities were paid

Surprising Statistics?......cont

� 7 of the 11 organisations taking on this staff type indicated that more than 50% of their placements/interns return onto their Graduate Programmes

� ………3 of those organisations saw a return rate of in excess of 80%

� The majority of organisations questioned assessed placements and internships using the same process as their Graduate Schemes

� ALL organisations sighted that Retail Experience was not a necessity!

What is a Placement/Internship?

PlacementsPlacements

� Offers an opportunity to gain invaluable experience by working for an employer

� Can be useful in confirming if your chosen career path is the right one for you� Usually undertaken whilst at college or university� Can help bolster your CV with relevant experience and skills� Great way of creating networking opportunities� Usually voluntary and as such are unpaid but expenses are often reimbursed

InternshipsInternships

� Normally a fixed period of time spent within industry� Some do as part of their degree� Can last from a week up to 1 year� Payment can differ dependent on company involved

� Normally assigned tasks i.e. projects and networking opportunities provided

RMP Enterprise

Undergraduate careers company specialising in placements and internships...

Survey – “There’s more to retail than you think…”

Data Collected � Student information� Where students are searching for job opportunities� Students confidence, perceptions and opinions of the Retail Sector

Incentive to complete survey - £50 Amazon voucher

Over 2,500 responses Promotion:-� database

� Facebook

� Twitter

� >350 university contacts across the UK

� >180 Brand Managers and Fair Helpers

� Top University Society contacts

ResultsWhich university do you attend?

Total universities = 119

Total attending universities = 46

Total responses from universities

attending = 1,436

Respondents from universities attending

= 57.44%

No

. R

esp

on

de

nts

ResultsWhat is your area of study?

Total study areas = 87

No

. R

esp

on

de

nts

ResultsWhat year of university are you in?

ResultsWhere do you currently look for job opportunities?

No

. R

esp

on

de

nts

ResultsHow confident do you feel that you know what a career in the Retail industry involves?

ResultsWhat opportunities do you think are available to you in the Retail sector?

ResultsWould you apply for a career in the Retail industry based on your current knowledge?

Conclusion � Good news! The majority of students are using the Careers Service &

Placement Officers to search for job opportunities.

� Students broadly know what opportunities are available...BUT over 50% do not feel confident in exactly what a career in the Retail industry involves.

� Over 2/3 of students would consider a career in Retail – How do we educate them?

Its everyone's job to educate students about the be nefits of work experience in the Retail Sector

The Collaborative Approach

� Employers and Careers Services collectively need to engage and educate in ways students are familiar with:� Careers service and Careers Fairs

� Technology

� Social Media

� Use leading undergraduate resources:� Such as

...encourage students to review! It provides fantastic peer to peer insight and helps educate and shape students opinion

351 reviews within the Retail Sector to date...

7.6 rating over the past year

Case Study - Brunel University

Winner of the Best University Placement/Careers Service at the 2012 Awards

“With a long-standing commitment to employability, Brunel has consistently impressed throughout their nomination with a real emphasis on the quality of work experience provision. Their students are provided with wonderful opportunities to succeed through a range of innovative and engaging activities. Their employability Guide given to all first year students, placement mentoring programme and industry specific ‘uncovered’ events are just three examples of the service going beyond the call of duty and excelling in its engagement with students.”

Our Interns

Amy Brereton

Intern at Enterprise

Sheffield University

Our Interns

Karina Sehgal

Graduate Trainee at Waitrose

Attended Newcastle University

Our Interns

Lizzie Liver

Graduate Trainee at John Lewis

Q&A

Any questions

Conclusions and Close

THE POWER OF RETAILTHE POWER OF RETAIL

WHAT WILL YOU TAKE AWAY FROM TODAY?

ARCADIA GROUP

ASDA GROUP

MAJESTIC WINE WAREHOUSES LTD

MITCHELLS AND BUTLERS

Offer graduate schemes in Retail Management, Property, Finance, HR, Marketing, Operations Management, IT & Commercial.

The leading operator of restaurants and pubs in the UK. 1600 restaurants and pubs with an employee base of 40,000.

Recruit 50+ graduates annually.New 2012- Offering Graduate Placements/Internships.

THE POWER OF RETAIL QUIZ

• In 2011 UK Retail Sales were in excess of £303 billion


Mitchells & Butlers sell 44 million pints of Carling a year...

That’s enough lager to fill 10 Olympic size swimming pools!

How many pints of Carling lager do Mitchells & Butlers sell in a year?


• In 2011 UK Retail sales were in excess of £303 billion

• UK Retail internet sales totalled £27 billion


Majestic Wine sold 172,000 bottles of Veuvelast year - 129,000 litres of champagne!

That would fill a few baths……

Majestic Wine sold £5 million worth of VeuveClicquot last year.

How many bottles is that?




• Retail generates 8% of the UK’s GDP


That’s a total of 84 million tins of beans a year!On average ASDA sells 9,475 tins of beans an

hour.

How many tins is that a year?





• Retail employs over 3 million people in UK


88,000 - TOPMAN first launched Chinos in 2010 and sales were zero.

On average TOPMAN now sell 12,000 a week

How many pairs of Chinos did TOPMAN sell the

week before Christmas 2011?





• Retail employs over 3 million people in UK

• In 2010 London beat Tokyo, New York and Paris in gross Retail sales totalling £64.2 billion in UK

RESEARCH: STUDENT PERCEPTIONS OF A GRADUATE CAREER IN RETAIL

RESEARCH SAMPLE: 50 students from Sheffield and Hertfordshire

QUESTIONS/COMMENTS RAISED FROM THE RESEARCH:

• Do I need a specific degree?

• How much responsibility will I have and how quickly will I progress?

• Will I be stacking shelves?

• What are the benefits?

• Will I be working every weekend?

SOME OF THEIR SUGGESTIONS:

• Make it more exciting

• Promote the benefits

• Give us some real life examples

GRADUATE PANEL

QUESTIONS?

THE POWER OF RETAIL

Retail: The Next Generation

Innovation, Ethics & Sustainability are shaping the future of retail.

Find out more about what Retailers are doing in these fields and

how Graduates can be a part of this.

Jessica Danby –

Machar Smith –

Rachel Rotherham –

Intro to the three of us

Audience Participation…

INNOVATION ETHICS SUSTAINABILITY

Why are we doing this presentation?

� The current plight of our sector

� Hot Topics

� Opportunities for students

Toxins

The Global View

Investment & Effort in this space…

� Many organisations will demonstrate their commitment to ethics, sustainability and innovation by publicly declaring commitments both financially and operationally.

� Some examples of this include:� B&Q have trained 11,000 of their employees on their eco-brand

products ‘One Planet’� In 2011 Santander invested more than 16 million Euros to

support child education, helping over 200,000 children� Partners at John Lewis have committed to offering their

business skills to UK Charities for up to 6 months, full time� The Co-operative will invest £7m per annum to help tackle

global poverty through co-operative support initiatives � Boots run their own combined heat and power (CHP) eco

friendly high efficiency energy station here on site.

What and Why?

� The creation of better ways to do things

� Developing new and exciting offerings

� Improving our current processes

� Challenge the norm

Who are the drivers of Innovation?

� Hack Days/Megastorms

� Competitions

� Innovation Days

� University Partnerships

How We Innovate?

What does Innovation look like?

Where do our Innovators come from?

� Mathematics & Statistics

� Computer Sciences

� Psychology

� Management Science

� Engineering

� History

� Geography

What is ethics?

‘“Understanding, embracing and displaying

the highest standards of integrity in the day-

to-day conduct of our business”

“Doing business in the right way”

“Proving that you can practice in an ethical and

compliant way in all your activities and interventions

with third parties and internal stakeholders”

Who is responsible for the ethics of an organisatio n?

� Customers

� Members/Shareholders

� Employees

� Business Leaders

What does ethics look like in Retail?

How can graduates be involved?

� Decision Making

� Placements/Projects

� Volunteering Opportunities

� Wider business initiatives

What advice can we offer?

� Retail offers a wealth of opportunity to be involved with organisations with a strong ethical focus

� Retail is a commercial environment. Even ethical organisations have to make money!

� Even if placements/projects don’t include ethics in the title, you will see that for those organisations with a strong focus on ethics, all career paths will have these values underpinning their approach to business

Key sustainability issues for retailers…

Carbon

Waste

Water Energy

Materials

Waste

Recycling and Managing waste

Climate Champions in HSBC

B&Q 87% waste diverted from landfill

M&S 94% waste recycled

JLP 81% waste diverted from landfill

Water

Materials

Managing Resources and Materials

Majestic - Biodegradable wine closures

94% Co-op food packaging FSA accredited

B&Q packaging £350k saved on one range review

M&S reduced water use by 62%

Waitrose vans fuelled by Biomethane gas

Carbon

Managing Carbon Emissions

Enterprise Rent-A-Car -http://www.drivingfutures.co.uk/

Majestic possibility of alternative powered vehicles

Co-op’s greenhouse gas emissions down 35%

HSBC became the first major carbon neutral bank

B&Q has cut carbon emissions by 26% from transport

Waitrose has achieved a 20% reduction in refrigeration and cooling emissions

Energy

HSBC offices - Earth Hour

B&Q installed new low-energy lighting systems

Managing Energy Usage

M&S improved store energy efficiency by 23%

JLP creating new energy centres to generate renewable energy

£40-60bn

30% CO2 cut by 2020

£10k / household

Future Eco Market opportunities

Carbon

Role Opportunities

• Corporate, Social Responsibility team

• Property

• Buying

• Supply Chain

• Retail Management

• etc…

What this means for Careers Advisors?

� What do you do if someone comes in asking to work for a company in these areas?

� How to advise you about how to advise your students?

Questions

agr sector focus group - retail - warwick blogs · mitchells and butlers offer graduate schemes in...

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