Case Study

Morrisons Degree Apprenticeship Programme

Background

Morrisons is the fourth largest chain of supermarkets in the UK. They began life as an egg and butter stall in Bradford before evolving into a business with almost 500 stores across the country. Morrisons source and process their fresh produce through their own manufacturing facilities and have it prepared in-store. With a workforce of around 97,000 – serving 11 million customers each week – Morrisons is committed to finding future leaders.

Morrisons has a long tradition of retailing excellence and Early Careers is vital to our future success and part of the DNA of the company. We know that nurturing our own future leaders drives business growth. Our business strategy never stands still and now more than ever we are operating in a world that requires us to work flexibly and respond to the needs of our customers.

The Solution

Morrisons partnered with Amberjack to create a new degree apprenticeship programme to accompany their existing graduate scheme, using a different approach to ingrain their ‘Ways of Working’ at an early stage.

Morrisons wanted to target candidates in an engaging way that aligned their talent with the roles, while also changing pre-existing perceptions and educating them on the diversity of the business. Morrisons were determined to improve the quality of their candidates before providing the skills and experience for them to enter a management role, with CMI chartered membership, after three years.

The new digital recruitment programme featured cutting-edge technology, without sacrificing a human experience for candidates. The automated, time-saving process is accompanied by personal feedback to coach, support and build trusted relationships that enhanced candidate experience.

Research

To design Morrison’s requests, 50 business leaders were interviewed to help identify the core behaviours required for role success and to ensure we were assessing the right fit for Morrison’s business streams. Insights from these interviews shaped the attraction and recruitment strategy for their new processes.

Attraction

The strategy for Attraction was digitally driven and included transforming the Morrisons website to create authentic and insightful content that would resonate with both students and their influencers, such as parents and teachers.

Selection

The new and innovative recruitment processes included a short registration, Situational Judgement Test, and video interview that introduces programme specific case studies featuring our colleagues. This provided an interactive and realistic experience.

Assessment

Before the pandemic, assessment centres were held at programme sites so candidates could take part in bespoke exercises in the environment where they applied to work, assessed by real colleagues including senior management. The assessment centres include defamiliarisation exercises to take candidates out of their comfort zone and help differentiate potential from experience. Due to the current restrictions these have been adapted and are currently hosted virtually.

Impact

48% offers made to

female candidates

Only 7% candidate

declined offers

100% retention

in the first year

50% degree apprentices

have been identified for promotion

What the client had to say...

“Amberjack has done us proud throughout our partnership. Early Careers is a massive part of Morrisons – it is who we are, nurturing young talent as our sustainability in this company.”

Early Careers People Manager, Morrisons