Amy Morgan – Commercial Coach at Nike

“The apprenticeship has led to greater trust and respect among the Athletes who regard me as a leader.”

Why an apprenticeship?

I have been with Nike for seven years now, starting as an eight-hour Athlete (Sales Advisor) whilst studying Sports Therapy at university. After five years, I progressed to management level as a Lead (Supervisor). As a Lead for two years, I covered all three departments in-store (commercial, service and operations) and after achieving an end of year review rating of ‘highly successful’, I felt ready to take on a new challenge.

I was offered the opportunity to do an apprenticeship and two months later, I took on the role of Coach (Department Manager) as a maternity leave cover. Being enrolled onto the Level 3 Retail Team Leader apprenticeship has really supported my progression as I am learning and developing new skills relevant to my new job role. The apprenticeship has been a huge confidence boost leading to my mid-year review as a Coach being rated as successful/borderline highly successful.

Benefitting my business

Within the workplace, I am a much more confident leader when performing the team captain role on the shop floor. I have learned strategies on how to have courageous conversations with both consumers and the Athletes when there is a difficult situation to discuss. This has had a positive impact on the store in that I am able to support the management team, and this frees up time for other managers to focus on their responsibilities and tasks. The apprenticeship has also led to greater trust and respect among the Athletes as their Coach.

As part of my apprenticeship project, I will be implementing a focus on ‘HER’ in-store which looks at training in how to serve women and the products we have available in-store and online specific to ‘HER’. Another idea that I have initiated is following up with 30-hour Athletes on their Individual Development Plans every three months to ensure we are getting the most potential out of these conversations. The aim is for this strategy to be filtered down to other team member contracts we have. 

The HIT Training difference

My apprenticeship journey with HIT Training has been great and I’ve been able to email my HIT Vocational Trainer at any point during the working week to get support when needed. I’ve had regular one-to-one meetings every month to discuss work completed, discuss next steps, and go through mock scenarios to prepare myself for the end-point assessment stages. My trainer has also visited me in-store to complete 12-week reviews with both myself and the Head Coach (Store Manager).

I have gained knowledge around Legal and Governance, which has supported my ability to deal with difficult customer situations around defective products or consumer rights for example. I have also learned about team leadership, team motivation, inspiration and dealing with challenges the team may be facing to complete their tasks. Within the next two years, I would like to be a permanent Coach with Nike and explore the possibility of progressing to the next stage of management as Assist Head Coach (Assist Store Manager).