IGD chief executive Joanne Denney-Finch has said that food and grocery businesses will need to ensure they have people with the right skills if they want to succeed in a challenging future.
Denney-Finch was speaking at the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute (GDI) International Retail Summit in Switzerland, which took place last week.
She said that greater automation of jobs in food and grocery and throughout the economy will “open up opportunities for new, higher skilled jobs”.
Businesses in the sector need to “plan for a very different future,” she told delegates. “That plan needs many components but the most critical element of all is people and skills. Everything else flows from having the right people with the right skills.
“The critical skills for tomorrow will include digital, food science, design and display, product knowledge, data analysis, communications, supply chain and cost control. All of these will be rooted in the skills of the past, but some will remain unchanged, some will be reinvented and some will be revived.”
© 2016 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. To subscribe to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine, click here.
