Sainsbury's: A great place to work

Developing and growing talent amongst staff is critical to achieving Sainsbury's goals and there is an ongoing commitment to developing the skills of store colleagues. Sainsbury's is the only national supermarket retailer to have achieved "Investors in People" reaccreditation in 2007.

Sainsbury's has recently announced that it is to become the first retailer and largest employer to offer its entire workforce of 150,000 colleagues the opportunity to gain nationally recognised qualifications. These would be equivalent to GCSE standard and a target has been set for 25% of colleagues to have a qualification within the next five years.

Through training in the workplace, Sainsbury's is also the first retailer to offer every colleague the opportunity to achieve an NVQ level 2 qualification which is the equivalent to five GCSEs at A-C grade.

Sainsbury's practices equality and inclusion in the workplace and is one of the founder partners of MENCAP'S WorkRight scheme.

Sainsbury's was one of the first of the large organisations to introduce a flexible pension scheme. In 2005/06 Sainsbury's set out to recruit 10,000 colleagues whom were aged 50 or older and by 2007 22% of Sainsbury's colleagues were aged 50 or over.

Approximately 400 full and part time jobs will be created for the local community in the new store and opportunities are available and colleagues encouraged to progress through the Company.