The co-operative
The Co-op pharmacy is the third largest pharmacy chain in the UK and the largest in Wales, with nearly 800 branches and dispensing over 53 million prescriptions a year.
Co-op Pharmacy decided to implement significant changes across a UK branches; one of which was a new Repeat Prescription service to rival its main competitors. To implement the process, Co-op Pharmacy’s L&D team created a two day courses to cover Complete Repeats or the process around repeat prescriptions. This involved training internal staff working in all pharmacies across the UK.
Recognising that they did not have the internal resources and coupled with tight time constraints, they tendered for an experienced external training organisation with a UK wide coverage to provide training to each Branch Champion who in turn would cascade the newly learned processes to each branch member.
After a successful tendering process, Elite Training were awarded the contract to deliver training to circa eight hundred Branch Champions across Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland over an eight week period.
Since the training course was bespoke, all identified trainers went through a Train the Trainer programme to ensure they had learned the subject matter thoroughly.
We were responsible for the following tasks:
- Working with Coop staff to identify suitable training locations across the UK.
- Matching locations with trainers based on dates and availability.
- Negotiating discounts with identified training venue managers and passing on these discounts to the Co-op.
- Sourcing and booking hotels / travel for trainers.
- Printing all associated training materials in house and delivering them in the correct quantities to the branches and training venues.
- Monitoring feedback and escalating any issues or problems back to Co-op for further discussion.
- Partake in daily conference ca s with Coop Pharmacy Headquarters.
- Track and record all course information for reporting purposes.
- Track venue, accommodation and refreshments spend for savings review.
Upon completion, feedback from the Co-operative Pharmacy regarding the quality of Elite trainers and Project Management was outstanding. Branch Champions successfully cascaded the knowledge to all associated branch staff and the Complete Repeats process has now been fully implemented across the UK.
