MANY companies are now looking abroad for skilled staff. In the past two years, Tesco has recruited 20 Chinese postgraduate students in the UK. After six weeks working in one of China’s 49 Tesco stores, they undertake further training in the UK to learn the retail business, says Lorna Bryson, Tesco’s UK head of resourcing, retail and distribution. Following that, they will be posted to a Tesco store in China. “This scheme has really started to take shape,” she says.

Recently, adds Bryson, Tesco has started recruiting MBA graduates in India who undertake development programmes there before being relocated to one of the company’s global businesses.

Closer to home, as well as retaining older workers – there’s an 82-year-old cashier in Scotland – and allowing flexible hours, university students returning home for holidays can ask to be transferred to their local store. “They mightn’t be able to work as many hours as they do in their usual store but we have a high success rate of slotting them in – 97% last Christmas,” says Bryson.

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