Encouraging Lloydspharmacy teams to engage with the business has been the "biggest single change" for the multiple, wholesaler AAH Pharmaceuticals has said.

The multiple had worked to “increase the level of ownership” that pharmacy teams felt towards their own branch, said Chris Frost, sales director of AAH Pharmaceuticals, which shares parent company Celesio with Lloydspharmacy.

“If you have one pharmacy, you can impart your culture yourself. When you’ve got 1,550, it’s nigh on impossible to get the same level of energy and passion unless you do something to make your staff feel like it’s their business,” Mr Frost told delegates at the Avicenna conference in Cyprus last week (May 25).

To solve this problem, in 2013 Lloydspharmacy launched its ‘inspire’ programme to help employees “really feel like they own the pharmacy and they have a stake in that”, he said.

More than 1,000 stores were already signed up to the programme, and Lloydspharmacy had recruited a team of ‘inspire coaches’ to roll-out the initiative across its remaining branches by the end of the year, the multiple told C+D last week.

Mr Frost said the programme included training and education sessions, with checks conducted every four weeks to make sure staff were engaged. Participating stores had reported increased sales of both OTC and NHS items, he added.

In February, a Gloucestershire pharmacy became the first independent to join the Lloydspharmacy franchise.

How do you encourage pharmacy staff to feel part of the business?

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