Caroline arrived in New Zealand from Scotland in 2010, backed by several years’ experience in the UK retail sector. She joined the Grove Group in 2012 as a checkout operator at Mitre 10, before rising to checkout supervisor and head of the seasonal and houseware departments at Mitre 10 Onehunga.

After taking the position of Learning and Development Co-ordinator in 2020, she was approached by senior leaders to become an HR Advisor in 2022. Today, she focuses on assisting the business with all human resource-related issues, and ServiceIQ has been by her side every step of the way.

After encouragement from Carol Tapsell, Service Sector Advisor for Auckland North to Warkworth, and with the support of her managers, Caroline embarked on her ServiceIQ New Zealand Certificate in Retail – Level 2 in 2012 and Level 3 in 2016.

While the original driver was to boost Caroline's CV, the experience gave her and the business much more. "It was fun, stimulating and challenging all at the same time and Carol was there to help me develop that growth. It helped me cement myself in New Zealand in many ways, giving me a real sense of purpose. The business could see that I was putting in the effort and that it was worth supporting me,” she says.

"It also helped my manager at the time – and the team around me – as it gave them a framework to help them teach me how they wanted me to do things."

ServiceIQ's retail qualifications equip individuals with the professional knowledge, standards, and best practice skills needed to excel in the sector and they’re now embedded into Mitre 10's training culture.

"ServiceIQ has been fantastic all the way through. Once I moved into the learning and development space, we brought the Level 3 programme in-house and started building our own workshops to train our own team members through it. Again, Caroline has been phenomenal in that area and is still a great support for our new learning and development person."

Now Senior HR Advisor, and a decade on from gaining her ServiceIQ retail qualifications, Caroline uses her knowledge to guide employees through the same programmes and assessments she completed.

"Things were a bit different in my day! Most of it was carried out on paper with some of it online, but we’re absolutely here for them. We sit down with them and help them slowly work through it. One of the best moments is when they’re taking on an assessed task and watching the realisation dawn on them that they do it all the time, to a good level, and seeing that confidence grow. It's cool."

Caroline is seeing more ambitious young people joining the business, and a high number of talented up-and-coming managers are also coming on board. "We have a lot of people who just want to learn at the Grove Group and Mitre 10. They want to know how the business runs, they want to know what their managers know, and they're asking good questions.

"That's where it's been useful for us to be able to build those workshops in-house, because we can give them exactly what they're looking for. Then, of course, with the ServiceIQ assessments that we use, it helps make sure that we're absolutely nailing the basics of what our people need to know, and we can build on that."

"Mitre 10 is fantastic at supporting growth, and I don't think I would have had the direction I needed to find that path to management as quickly as I could without them and ServiceIQ. It gave me a good grounding of what questions to ask, where to go to get me where I wanted to be – and all a little bit faster than if I had been left to my own devices."

Caroline's story demonstrates how on-the-job training can unlock career opportunities, enhance capabilities, and strengthen retail businesses.

Start training your retail team today with ServiceIQ's on-the-job Retail Level 2, 3 and 4 pathways and build skills now and grow your future leaders.

Make today the day you grow your people and grow your business with affordable on-the-job retail training for your employees. ServiceIQ is the workplace training specialist for the hospitality, retail, tourism, aviation, travel, and museum sectors New Zealand wide.