SPAR South Africa: Thirteen Years of Learning at Scale

Keeping a large, distributed workforce aligned is one of the biggest challenges facing organisations operating across multiple locations.

The challenge

For SPAR South Africa, the challenge is amplified by its voluntary trading model. With more than 120,000 active employees across 1,024 sites, employees work across distribution centres, stores and specialist service departments, performing roles ranging from food preparation and customer service to equipment operation, health and safety, compliance and management.

Before LearnWare, training relied predominantly on on-the-job learning, with store managers and experienced colleagues responsible for passing operational knowledge to new employees. Regional trainers also travelled to stores to deliver face-to-face training.

The result was difficult to sustain. Training standards could vary between locations, and with employee turnover running at around 25%, training had to be continually repeated. SPAR needed a way to establish consistent standards without relying solely on managers or travelling trainers.

The requirement was not simply to put training online. It was to create a scalable learning environment that could provide consistent standards, relevant learning, organisational visibility and access to training 24/7.

The solution

LearnWare gave SPAR a centralised digital learning environment that could be deployed across a large and decentralised workforce, while retaining local ownership of learning.

More than 50 operationally focused courses have been developed, covering areas including food safety and hygiene, customer service, retail operations, fresh foods, butchery, bakery, produce, merchandising, point-of-sale, health and safety, compliance, leadership, loss prevention, product knowledge and safe equipment operation.

Crucially, learning paths are position-specific, ensuring employees receive training relevant to the role they perform.

This moves learning beyond a generic course catalogue. Employees access the knowledge they need for their jobs, while store and site managers have the tools to support and reinforce learning within their teams.

Learning at scale

Since 2014, the results have been substantial:

These figures demonstrate the scale at which SPAR can deliver digital learning across its organisation.

From training to visibility

LearnWare has also changed what SPAR can see and manage.

Real-time reporting provides organisation-wide visibility of learning activity, including who is completing training, which courses are being completed, activity across regions and sites, employee demographics and areas where additional learning may be required.

For an organisation where Central Office does not necessarily have direct line-of-sight of in-store staffing, this visibility is particularly valuable.

Learning is no longer dependent on paper records or individual managers knowing who has been trained. It becomes measurable, more visible and easier to manage strategically.

Consistency with local ownership

The model combines centralised standards, local ownership and individual learning.

Central Office can establish and communicate the required learning, while managers retain an important role in supporting their teams. Employees can complete training independently and at their own pace, fitting learning around the realities of retail operations.

This creates a sustainable alternative to a purely trainer-led model, particularly for a workforce that is large, geographically dispersed and continually changing.

Operational impact

The purpose of the platform is not simply to increase course completions. It is to improve performance in the workplace.

At SPAR, the approach has been reflected in improved food safety and customer service audit scores nationally, connecting learning activity to tangible operational outcomes.

A partnership that has evolved

Over more than a decade, LearnWare has evolved alongside SPAR, with the LearnWare team working with SPAR subject matter experts to support operational initiatives. The platform now provides mobile learning, interactive video, tailored learning pathways, digital assessments, reporting, dashboards, blended learning, content authoring, personalised learning, integration capabilities and AI-assisted content generation.

The relationship has extended beyond South Africa, with LearnWare supporting learning across the broader SADC region and Sri Lanka, as well as historical SPAR operations and content initiatives in Qatar, the Netherlands, Switzerland and China.

What SPAR says

“LearnWare’s eLearning system has been a game changer for our entire SPAR business. Our store and DC staff have been able to consistently access job-specific training 24/7, since 2015.”

Tembi Topham
Former Group HRDM, SPAR SA

“With LearnWare’s solution, we’ve been able to launch our own Build it branded eLearning platform. This has helped adapt our L&D strategy to the 4th Industrial Revolution and transform our training offering. It has allowed us to provide wide-scale employee upliftment, through an extremely cost-effective and powerful learning platform.”

Thandwa Motlohi
Divisional HR Exec, Build it

The takeaway

SPAR’s experience demonstrates that digital learning can do more than replace classroom training.

For a large, distributed workforce, the right learning environment can help establish consistent standards, give employees access to relevant training, provide management with visibility and support operational performance, at a scale traditional training models struggle to match.

Want to see what learning at scale could look like for your organisation?

Speak to LearnWare about building a scalable learning environment for your workforce.