Reducing Attrition, Raising Capability: Specsavers' Ongoing Impact with Learn Amp

Specsavers, the world’s largest privately owned optometry group, first partnered with Learn Amp in 2020 to transform how learning was delivered across their highly distributed teams in Australia and New Zealand.

Each Specsavers store operates as part of a franchise model. Partners are the business owners responsible for each store, and Store Managers are responsible for the day-to-day team leadership and performance.

The goal? To make learning faster, more relevant, and more accessible — shifting from face-to-face workshops to agile, in-store, digital-first development.

Since launch, that transformation hasn’t just continued — it’s accelerated.

After rolling out Learn Amp to digitise and decentralise learning, Specsavers set a new goal: create a culture of continuous learning, owned and driven at store level.

Key focus areas included:

• Measuring and improving time-to-competence
• Launching leadership development at scale
• Creating specialist programmes for Store Managers and Store Partners
• Supporting long-term engagement and reducing attrition

Over five years, Specsavers has used Learn Amp to embed structured learning journeys, expand programmes into new areas, and strengthen engagement from frontline to leadership. This builds on their early success, captured in our original case study, How Specsavers Reduced Time-to-Competence by 47% Using Learn Amp.

Using Learn Amp to deliver, track, and automate development, Specsavers now sees:

• 55% of new starters achieving Level 1 competency within 90 days (up from 24% in 2023)
• 89% of all team members now at Level 1 (up from 65% in 2021)
• 73% at Level 2 , and 40% at Level 3 (up from 55% and 25%, respectively)
  
  

These levels reflect increasing capability, from dispensing single-vision lenses to mentoring, handling complex prescriptions, and resolving customer challenges.

Specsavers launched the Manager Ascent Program (MAP) via Learn Amp to better support Store Manager capability and engagement. The platform's intuitive design and automation features have allowed Specsavers to deliver the programme in a scalable, low-effort way—making formal development more consistent across regions.

Store Managers now benefit from structured, ongoing learning—an area that was previously under-supported.

The PCLD programme was created to support Partner growth, tracked through Learn Amp’s CPD functionality.

In the past year:

• 98% of Partners participated
• 40% achieved 32+ hours
• 24,318 hours of development were logged (avg. 28 hrs/Partner)