IGD has identified eight essential employability skills that will help set students up for future success in the food and grocery industry.
The eight essential skills were developed in consultation with 18 senior HR professionals from some of the largest companies in the industry.
They will be central to IGD’s Feeding Britain’s Future workshops, which give children insight into the opportunities available and skills needed in the food and grocery sector.
The eight essential employability skills identified are:
Entrepreneurial: Shoppers are always looking for new and interesting products and the industry, particularly start-ups, needs curious people who can spot these opportunities.
Creativity: The industry needs creative thinkers who can bring ideas to life, from marketing roles to packaging design.
Teamwork: Products don’t appear on supermarket shelves by magic; there’s a huge and complex supply chain working behind the scenes to achieve a common goal.
Communication: From translating technical product information into shopper-friendly messages to providing customer service on Twitter, there are hundreds of opportunities in comms across the sector.
Leadership: All companies need inspiring and confident people to move their business in the right direction.
Digital: From ensuring shoppers can buy groceries on their smartphones to making deliveries by drones, technology is transforming the food and grocery industry.
Practical: From transport engineers to manufacturing roles, the food and grocery industry is built on people who think practically to discover why and how things work.
Analytical: From food scientists ensuring food safety, to supply chain analysts able to distil data and move products from farm to shelf efficiently, there are big opportunities for those with analytical skills.
IGD Chief Executive, Joanne Denney-Finch commented: “The world of work is changing dramatically and many of the jobs of the future do not yet exist. This is especially so in the food and grocery industry as new technologies are adopted, social and consumer trends change and organisations become more complex.
“We expect the eight essential employability skills to be highly valued by our industry in the future and they form the linchpin of our Feeding Britain’s Future Schools Programme.
“All our Feeding Britain’s Future workshops are attended by food and grocery industry professionals who share their experiences and bring these eight employability skills to life for students.”
The employability skills were drawn up through one-to-one interviews and feedback from IGD’s expert HR group supported by a comprehensive literature review of existing work on skills from a wide range of organisations.
This was in addition to IGD’s research into the supply chain skills gap, which included a quantitative survey of 150 supply chain professionals.
Alongside the eight employability skills, IGD has launched a new five-minute video, played at the start of each Feeding Britain’s Future workshop, to showcase the diverse range of roles available in the food and grocery supply chain.
The video aims to change perceptions of the food and grocery industry by revealing the range of exciting and dynamic jobs available, straight from the young people doing those roles.
Since the Feeding Britain’s Future Schools Programme began in 2015, 15,000 students have attended a workshop. The programme will aims to increase its impact in 2017 and train 10,000 students.
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