Improved materials for Store Manager Trainees

Based on real-life experiences and best practice cases, new training materials for Store Manager Trainees have been developed by Retail and HR departments.

“As JYSK is changing, our materials should also be updated. I really think the training materials are much better now.”

Those are the words from Arno den Otter, District Manager in JYSK Netherlands, who has helped produce some of the new international materials for the Store Manager Trainee (SMT) programme.

Before Arno became District Manager, he worked several years as Store Manager, which has been important when creating great materials.

“I used my own experience as a Store Manager to update the new materials. There are a lot of practical items in the programme, as this has been my main focus. We have also used a lot of pictures to make the materials visually interesting and fun,” says Arno.

Now that the training materials are being used in all JYSK Nordic countries, Arno is happy to have been part of the project:

“I must say I felt proud when I saw my work being used. That is so great.”

Cooperation between Retail and HR

Producing the new materials has been a cooperation between the HR and Retail departments. In West Balkan, for instance, HR Business Partner Ana Zlopaša has worked with her Retail colleagues.

“It is important for us to cooperate when we build training materials for retail. From an HR point of view, we have knowledge about what the training should look like, and Retail has better knowledge about how the stores are actually working,” explains Ana.

According to both HR and Retail colleagues, the cooperation has been great.

“We have chosen people from Retail, who have lots of experience as Store Managers. They are now in other positions, but they still have lots of personal knowledge they could share. That has been really helpful when reviewing the training materials,” says Ana.