Participants in employment and training programmes for retail work are benefiting by also taking part in ’brand fit’ sessions to help them understand where they might be happiest in work.

Retail and office property developer Hammerson works with its shopping centre tenants, the public sector, charities and other stakeholders to create jobs in retail-led regeneration projects and prepare those needing work to fill vacancies.

Speaking at a London event hosted last week by niche job board Caterer.com, Hammerson community manager Michelle Dawson emphasised that obtaining core retail work skills was important, but that making the right match between candidate and brand could significantly help the new employee’s career progression.

“It’s sort of like dating and matchmaking. If we get the matchmaking right, people progress really well,” Dawson said.

The local employment and training strategies co-ordinated by shopping centre real estate developer and manager Hammerson have created more than 7,000 jobs in Aberdeen, Bristol and Leicester. Pre-employment training has been a key element in the initiatives. In the brand fit sessions, participants learned about differences between work environments and expectations of various tenant brands such as Apple, Debenhams and John Lewis which were recruiting.

“We talked about what those brands were actually looking for,” Dawson said. “People could actually think about what brand to apply to.”
Hammerson’s tenants at shopping centres such as Leicester’s Highcross benefit by being able to tap into a workforce that are prepared and ready to work as a result of their pre-employment training. Better trained workers deliver better customer service which in turn benefits the retail and hospitality operators by increasing footfall. “Consumers are looking for experiences, not just products,” Dawson said.

The combination of the retail projects and training the potential workforce has given communities a much needed economic boost. Dawson told the audience: “Every local authority I speak to, it’s about jobs, it’s about growth and how can local people access these jobs.”
The event was aimed at sharing with catering and hospitality in-house recruiters recruitment lessons from the retail industry on attraction, retention and people development.