During the National Apprenticeship Week, Savers organised a myriad of events across the country to showcase the apprenticeship opportunities in their stores. Apprenticeship shows were hosted in various locations including Milton Keynes, Strood, and Birmingham, and were advertised across multiple channels and platforms to both internal and external audiences.
Superdrug opened its 800th store in the UK, marking an important milestone of A.S. Watson Group (ASW) in the market. The new store located in Edge Lane in Liverpool, which is one of Superdrug’s new retail park formats and this bigger space allows the full range of products to be showcased and with focus to make up brands.
All Savers store colleagues were invited to take part in a fundraising event in June, to raise money for Marie Curie, a charity that provides care and support for terminally ill people and their families. Events were held in stores, and everyone was asked to dress in yellow throughout the month. Teams created fun activities such as baking cakes and doing face-painting. A staggering total of £24,727.25 was raised.
In support of Marie Curie’s Great Daffodil Appeal for cancer patients, Superdrug stores donned their best fancy dress costumes to collect donations for a weekend. The event showed the passion that the Superdrug team had for increasing the £2.7 million already raised during the five-year partnership between the brand and the impactful charity.
Savers has also played its part in raising funds for Marie Curie with the first event of 2017 kicked off in March also with the Great Daffodil appeal. With the help of our lovely store colleagues they really did some fantastic events from dressing up to baking sweet treats and raffling prizes!
In November 2016, Superdrug and Savers launched the Resource Recovery Unit at their Dunstable Distribution Centre, which had already been recycling 9,000 tonnes of waste from stores each year. The purpose-built unit will improve the facility’s capacity whilst freeing up space to support availability in stores. The 26,000 square foot unit is home to the recycling, cage repair and tote washing facilities for the Superdrug and Savers brands.
Currently, more than 200 school and college leavers are enrolled into Savers’ apprenticeship programme. These 16- to 18-year-olds are all working towards a Retail Skills Level 2 apprenticeship and their positive feedback has helped rank Savers 3rd amongst United Kingdom’s top 100 employers. Savers has also been awarded Top Apprentice Employer for Retail, Best Level of Support and Best for Job Satisfaction awards, further boosting the reputation of Savers’ national talent and skills programmes.
Savers has been recognised as the 15th Best Big Company to work for in the UK. In the survey, Savers was rated with significant improvement on the key 8 engagement drivers.
The fundraising day for Marie Curie Cancer Care are held in UK Superdrug and Savers. Staff in the Milton Keynes stores comes over all spooky with a Halloween-themed. Dressing up for the occasion, the team raises over £260 for the charity through customer donations.
In September, 600 staff attended the annual Savers Store and Assistant Managers Christmas Conference. The theme of the conference was “Record Breakers”, celebrating the high number of records broken and inspiring everyone to keep up the good work.
Peter Macnab is appointed as Managing Director of A.S. Watson Health & Beauty UK
