Woolworths, Australia’s largest private employer, is investing A$50 million to help employees ride the wave of technological change.
The company has announced plans to make the investment over the next three years to equip its team with new skills and capabilities for the retail industry of the future.
The Woolworths Future of Work Fund will help upskill, reskill and redeploy team members impacted by industry disruption and technological change.
It will also underpin the launch of an online learning platform to offer team members easily accessible training, apprenticeship and mentoring support across Australia.
The key technical focus areas for training will be in digital, data analytics, Machine Learning and robotics, with further investment planned for advanced customer service skills, team leadership and agile ways of working.
The fund is expected to support training for more than 60,000 Woolworths team members over three years across its store and e-commerce operations, supply chain network and support offices.
Brad Banducci, Woolworths Group CEO, said: “Technological advances in automation, predictive analytics, AI and cloud computing are making core retail processes much faster and more efficient than ever before.
“The Future of Work Fund is designed to equip our team members with new skills and capabilities that will not only serve their career within Woolworths but across a number of industries.”
