Marks & Spencer has established the retail industry’s first apprenticeship scheme for data technicians as it pushes forward with its ambitions to become a digital-first business.
The initiative, which follows M&S’ creation of a digital academy two years ago, which has so far trained 700 people, is designed to make data training more accessible to more employees and help “ensure data is at the heart of all decision making”.
The programme, pitched at a slightly less advanced level than the retailer’s data analyst fellowship, is open to all staff and will educate them in “the fundamentals of how to manipulate and scrutinise data, and how to translate it into valuable insights that the business can then act upon”.
Training for the first group of employees started this week and another group will start in January. M&S aims for around 70 people to enrol over a 12-month period.
Through the data analyst fellowship, M&S said it has trained about 200 colleagues from stores and head office in database and programming languages such as R, Python, SQL and machine learning. The skills learned have been applied in the retailer’s response to the pandemic.
M&S chief digital and data officer Jeremy Pee said: “M&S has a rich dataset – from Sparks to M&S.com to M&S Bank – and in order to thrive in a digital future, we need colleagues who can act upon this insight and put data at the heart of everything we do.
“With the relaunch of Sparks, the creation of our new data hub and continued investment in colleague data literacy programmes, we are building the foundations to deliver a step-change in customer experience, and we’re already seeing the benefits a more data-literate workforce can bring.
“This new apprenticeship will give us a new platform to go even bigger and engage even more colleagues through the power of data and we’re really excited about the difference it will make.”
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