Reflecting its “commitment to finding the best retail talent”, each programme has been reshaped and simplified “to focus even more on the store experience”.Each has been aligned to key business areas including Retail through the Retail Leaders Programme, and Clothing & Home through the Clothing & Home Business Programme.
The scale of 2024’s Retail Leaders Programme is “significantly bigger” – with the retailer wanting to attract 114 people who will comprise 38 school leavers and 76 graduates (compared to 29 graduates in 2023).The major increase reflects M&S’s focus on “developing talent who want early accountability, can bring fresh perspectives, and build the skills to become future leaders in the business”.School-leavers and graduates on the Retail Leaders programme will be “hands-on from day one, building the skills and experience needed to manage a store”. By the end of the two- or three-year programme, “they will be managing a store of their own — the equivalent of running a business with a multi-million-pound turnover”.M&S said its CEO Stuart Machin has had a personal interest in shaping the schemes.“He drew upon his own experience — where a job at a supermarket as a teenager set him on the path to becoming the Chief Executive of a FTSE 100 company – to make sure the programmes equipped talent with the skills they need to lead a M&S store of the future”, the retailer added.
