Superdrug pledge to enrol 500 new Apprentices in 2024 and continue to support young people with their Life Skills Programme

• The Health and Beauty retailer pledges to enrol 500 Apprentices to their programmes in 2024 to help drive social mobility 
• The brand continues to upskill apprentices with their industry leading Life Skills programme 
• Last year, Superdrug called on the Government for more flexibility in the Apprenticeship Levy

Superdrug have pledged to take on a further 500 apprentices throughout 2024 alongside sister company Savers and are proud to support National Apprenticeship Week (5^th – 11^th February) highlighting this year’s theme of ‘Skills for Life’.

Last year, the two accessible health and beauty retailers, pledged to recruit 500 new apprentices over three years, however, last year proved so successful with over 80 percent of this target recruited in 2023 that the brands have been able to up the target number of new recruits to 500 for 2024 alone.

With thousands of retail jobs being lost in 2023, Superdrug’s announcement hopes to encourage more people to seek a job in retail and give them reassurance that the retail industry is growing. The brand recruited 8,000 people last year and have a further 7,000 retail roles to fill this year.

Apprenticeship roles available are made up of Level 2, 3 & 4 programmes supporting young people to get work in a key industry, boosting the retail economy and allowing them to upskill themselves and gain valuable life skills.

Superdrug’s People Director, Amy Davies says “Our apprenticeship scheme is incredibly important to us as a business and we are so pleased that last year was so successful. We are so passionate about offering the UK’s young people opportunities and the scheme is critical for developing talent for the future. Our aim is not only to give young people the best entry into retail that we can, but also to help them grow and develop in their roles, so they choose to progress their careers within our businesses.”

For National Apprenticeship Week, Superdrug also wish to highlight the importance of gaining ‘skills for life’, an area the brand has been supporting their recruits with for the last two years with their industry leading bespoke Life Skills programme. The scheme, designed and created by the Superdrug Team, supports apprentices with general life skills such as writing a CV or helping them understand their finances and has been invaluable to those that have already taken on the course. The Life Skills programme also received an ‘outstanding’ rating as part of last years OFSTED inspection, recognising the teams efforts in apprenticeship support.

“The Life Skills programme helped me to explore all the different job roles at Superdrug, the CV and Cover letter section really helped me and I found the work skills, computer skills, cybercrime, money management and health and wellbeing sections invaluable to my learning” said a previous Superdrug Apprentice.

Davies adds: “We are constantly evolving and improving our apprenticeship scheme to attract the brightest and best young talent. The theme of this year’s National Apprenticeship Week, ‘Skills for Life,’ we feel is very appropriate, as we’ve worked hard to be able to offer not  just apprenticeships but also provide our apprentices with any extra support that they require in order to get a step up in life. Whether they need help in passing their English or Maths GCSE or need help with general life skills such as CV writing or Financial Wellbeing. 18% of our apprentices come from low economic and social backgrounds, and after Covid we saw that the lost generation really suffered in terms of their social and day to day skills. We spent time ensuring that new apprentices joining our scheme felt supported across all areas and our teams helped them with everyday life skills to enable them to be able to get the most out of their apprenticeship.”

Last year, Superdrug also reinforced the BRC’s calls for change to the Apprenticeship Levy, which asks for more flexibility in the scheme to ensure that valuable funds can be used in more ways to support those in Apprenticeships and not wasted.

A recent survey by the British Retail Consortium found that retailers could have offered 12,000 more apprenticeships over the past year if it wasn’t for the inflexible levy scheme^[1]. The industry took on approximately 17,000 apprenticeships last year, meaning that a reform of the levy could boost numbers by 70 per cent.

Superdrug and Savers offer one of the largest and most long-standing Apprenticeship Schemes in UK retail (18 years) – the multi-tier scheme aims to help people to kick-start, accelerate and elevate their careers. Whether a school leaver looking for their first job, a current employee hungry to take on more responsibility, or an ambitious assistant manager, the programme is designed to support every apprentice. The programme has three levels of apprenticeships that people can apply for and aims to support them at every stage of their career and progression. Rise up to Learn is for entry level retail apprenticeships, Rise up to Level-Up – a step into management and Rise Up to Lead on – a step into a leadership role.

Since its launch in 2007, over 4,500 people have achieved qualification and 30 percent of graduates have chosen to stay within the business.

For more information and to apply for an apprenticeship position visit https://www.superdrug.jobs/apprenticeships and https://www.savers.jobs/apprenticeships

^[1] https://brc.org.uk/news/corporate-affairs/12-000-lost-apprenticeships/