Marks and Spencer - shop floor.
Development of transferrable business skills & my experience
Transferrable business skills.
Problem solving was another key business skill that was developed on a lot during my placement, the staff were very unprepared for our arrival at Marks and Spencer which meant that a lot of the time the activities that we done were suggested by myself in order to stop them from giving us jobs that were not a required part of our experience. This skill will be a good one to carry through into my future careers as it is a vital skill to have when things go wrong, it makes you a reliable team member.
We touched on planning in the experience, the most planning I worked on was planning our days and when we were having meetings, timings of breaks and when to meet for breaks. The other planning that we touched on was with planning overnight moves to get the store prepared for Black Friday, this involved pricing what clothes were going into the sale, reorganising the store to fit in more rails and to bring sale promotions to the front. We helped with doing pricing and were walked through what was happening with the moves where I inputed some of my opinions to improve the layout.
A useful transferrable business skill was decision making which I exercised a lot during my placement, I was the one who decided on breaks, and I was the one to decide on what to do when no one had anything planned for us. This is now a strong skill for me as I feel comfortable making decisions that I believe are correct and beneficial.
Negotiation was a daily task at Marks and Spencer, not only did I exercise it however I also witnessed it. Managers would have to negotiate with each other to spread staff and get their required staff, negotiation would also occur between staff and managers about breaks, shift works and where they were working. I exercised negotiation with break times and when we would be able to go to certain departments.
During my placement it became evident that I need to be very flexible in order to work there as every day I was asked to be on a new department and work with items I hadn't worked with before this helped me develop my flexibility skill a lot as I never turned down a task that they asked me to do. Additionally team working was a daily skill at Marks and Spencer, whether it was with my fellow classmates from the Fashion Retail academy or with staff at Marks and Spencer. The main times I acted within a team was with doing a move with the lingerie team or when communicating feedback with the Fashion Retail Academy girls.
Lastly, business awareness was developed a lot, with Marble Arch being the international flagship store it meant that we had to deal with a lot of foreign customers who had a lot of questions. We developed on this skill by having department meetings with people such as M&S bank to learn more about their sections, we had team briefs and managers meetings so we were kept up to date with what was happening in M&S and what was happening.
In my future I want to excel into becoming an in house buyer, all of the skills I developed on will help me to be skilled at my job. All of the team skills will help me be a good team member and be able to involve everyone into making a co-operative and functional team. The business skills will help me with being able to understand my customer and the brand to create suitable products. Organisation, negotiation and flexibility will help with being able to stay focused, on time and to be able to do whatever is necessary to get the job done.