The Retail CoVE is designed to help colleges and training providers meet the needs of employers and employees within the retail market place, whilst improving the perception of retail and establishing it as a career of choice.

Priorities

The Retail CoVE has 7 priorities as follows:

• Work with employers to understand their needs, increase their willingness to train their employees and support them in developing practical, innovative and flexible solutions
• Make retail a first choice sector and ensure the supply of skills to meet expansion and replacement demand
• Raise the low / basic skills levels of retail employees and the unemployed
• Identify and support the employment hotspots in the North West region through the development and support of Skillshops
• Raise the skills and qualifications of managers in the sector through the expansion of Level 3 provision
• Develop enterprise skills in the North West region
• Collaboration, sharing best practice and dissemination amongst partners, providers and employers.

Meeting Priorities

There will have been a number of key steps put in place to achieve priorities which include:

• Marketing & promotion
• E-curriculum/e-commerce development
• Employer network development
• Management development
• Apprenticeship development.

In particular working with employers will provide the following key benefits:

• Input & advise the direction of the CoVE and provide guidance to ensure we are hitting the right areas
• Steer all partners correctly (colleges, training providers, sector skills councils, LSC’s, employers)
• Any future developments – employers would be given 1st option (i.e. e-NVQ pilots etc)
• Any training resources employers require could be funded through the CoVE
• Provide an understanding of what other employers are doing, whilst giving networking opportunities
• Build up of marketing case studies and PR through no costs
• Be at the forefront of all government initiatives both nationally and regionally.