Learning the skills NOW way
Simply the best!
skills NOW’s objective is to provide quality, easy to use training resources to meet the needs of today’s retailers. skills NOW is not just a collection of separate Retail Certificate units but an integrated activity learning program based on five key principles:
1. Current and relevant to current retailing needs
The many omissions from SIR07 courses such as GST (introduced in 2000), planograms, SKUs markdowns, shrinkage, supply chain efficiency, category management and many more suggest that they have not been updated by people with practical retail experience for many years and thus do not meet the needs of 21st century retailers. skills NOW material is up to date and where possible fills the skill gaps (subject to course restraints).
2. User friendly material
Although Cert II trainees are not great readers or scholars, much of the training material is massive, overblown and totally inappropriate (one publisher’s Cert II material totals 900 pages - for an entry level program??) SNBR reduces the material from 14 to 4 books, uses simple everyday language, avoids duplication and repetition and emphasises practical learning activities. A by-product of this format is significantly lower cost.
3. Learn by doing
Practical learning activities, where possible to be completed in store or a retail environment play a key role in all skills NOW packages. Mapped against unit elements of competency and performance criteria, not only does the trainee read about a skill but learns by doing it. Each package has many activities - Retail Achiever for Certificate II has about 40 to be done in store. These are fully documented for easy assessment.
4. “Retail is detail”
Retailers tend to be excited about new fashions and products (often technology based) such as plasma TVs or Wiis. Such products often deliver short term sales gains, but most retail success is hard earned. In tough times, the retailer should not seek excuses for poor results such as fashion, the weather or the economy and focus on “how can I improve?”. This involves managing the business in detail and doing many small things a little better eg it has been found that each 1% out of stocks costs a store 2% in lost sales (out of stocks tend to be the better sellers) - if a store with sales of $1,000,000 per year could reduce its out of stocks rate from 8% to 6%, then this would increase sales by about $40,000 and profit by $12,000 to $15,000 depending on margin. In combination, many such small improvements, can lead to significant sales and profit gains.
Combined with the practical learning activities, this emphasis on small improvements encourages a positive staff “What can I do?” or “How can we do it better?” attitude to encourage trainee skill development and making a positive contribution to business success.
5. Sharing the work
If we accept the “learn by doing” principle, then most learning activities should be done by the trainee with the trainer playing management, supervisory or coaching roles. skills NOW, learning activities are fully documented and assessment aids provided for better easier assessment.
6. End of the Noting process
The National Quality Council (NQC) recently accepted the Noting Process Evaluation Final Report recommendations and immediately terminated the training material Noting process and its ü logo as it was “not in the best interest of delivering quality training outcomes.”.
As all skills NOW packages are up to date and map practical learning activities to unit elements of competency and performance criteria, they already meet the new, NQC Product Specification recommendations 9 and 10 and can be used with confidence.
