Our annual
review
2023 2024
WHY
WE
ARE
HERE
To change lives
through
better sight
and
hearing
Our purpose 4-5
Our growth 6-9
Our customers 24-37
Specsavers Executive Board 54-57
Contents
Our people 10-23
Sustainably making a dierence 38-51
Looking forward 52-53
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As 2024 marks our ruby jubilee, we are humbled to reflect
on 40 years of the Specsavers story.
From the very beginning, our ambition was to make a real
dierence. An opportunity arose to do just that when, in the
early 1980s, a change of regulations in the UK allowed opticians
to advertise their products and services for the first time.
At a time when high prices and limited choice were the
norm, we were passionate about providing value for money.
In 1984, Specsavers was born and we embarked on a journey,
underpinned by the passion of joint-venture partners, to make
expert clinical care and high-quality eyewear accessible to all.
From the opening of that very first optical store to the
2,700+ multi-category businesses we have today, our simple
purpose remains just as powerful: to change lives through
better sight and hearing.
Our purpose
What an incredibly special year
for our business.
4
YEARS
OF CARE
Our annual review 2023 - 2024
We’ve spent the last four decades doing exactly that. The work
we do is far more than dispensing glasses, fitting contact
lenses, prescribing hearing aids or performing ophthalmological
surgeries; it’s about transforming healthcare. We’re privileged
to have made a dierence to millions of people during
the past 40 years.
This review explains just some of our progress and achievements
over the last 12 months including:
Continuing our growth across all markets as we open new
businesses, invest in innovative technology, and diversify
the services we oer.
Nurturing our people in more ways than ever before,
helping everyone to feel valued, cared for, and supported
in achieving their full potential.
Providing even greater clinical care, professional expertise,
value and choice to our customers.
Further improving how we support our local communities,
protect our planet, and source responsibly to ensure
we are sustainably making a dierence.
None of this would be possible without the dedication of the
amazing people we’ve worked with over the years.
Thank you to our partners and colleagues around the globe for
the unique role each of you has played in the Specsavers story
so far. Thank you for the way you have cared for our customers,
and each other. Your passion and commitment have touched
the lives of millions and shaped our business into what it is today.
5
Doug Perkins
Chairman and Founder
Dame Mary Perkins
Founder
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Our purpose
Our
growth
£4.01 billion
Group
revenue
10.3%
Growth
on 2022/23
UK £2,172.4m
ROI £166m
Netherlands £163.3m
Sweden £145m
Norway £111.5m
Denmark £157.1m
Finland £45.7m
Spain £6.6m
Australia £874.5m
New Zealand £102.8m
Canada £62.3m
Revenue by
market
Figures as at the end
of February 2024
6
Our annual review 2023 - 2024
7
Our facts
and figures
2,721
optical, audiology, domiciliary
and ophthalmology businesses
visitors to our
website every week
1.8million96,602
ophthalmic procedures
performed via Newmedica
43,593
colleagues
customer feedback
responses
1.7 million
5,330
Partners
580 million
contact lenses sold
24.3 million
frames sold
717,899
hearing aids sold
44.6million
customers worldwide
Our annual review 2023 - 2024
Our
businesses
Australia 389 | 170
New Zealand 60 | 26
Canada 110
Key:
Optical
Audiology
Domiciliary
Newmedica
ROI 63 | 22
Spain 9
Norway 83
Sweden 121
Denmark 79
Netherlands 143 | 141
Finland 52
UK 929 | 260 | 46
18 (services across
29 locations)
8
Our annual review 2023 - 2024
Our story
so far
1984 Opened first store in UK
1990 Opened in Republic of Ireland
1997 Opened in Netherlands
2003 Launched ‘Should’ve gone to Specsavers’ strapline in UK
Expanded into audiology in UK
2004 Acquired Blic optical group in Sweden
2005 Opened in Norway / Acquired Louis Nielsen in Denmark
2006 Opened in Spain
2007 Opened in Finland / Expanded into audiology in the Netherlands
2008 Opened in Australia and New Zealand
2010 Market leader: New Zealand
2011 Market leader: Australia
2013 Acquired UK domiciliary eyecare business Healthcall
2014 Market leader: Denmark, Norway and Sweden
2015 Market leader: Finland
2016 Expanded into enhanced optical services
Partnered with UK ophthalmology business Newmedica
2017 Expanded into audiology in Australia
2019 Expanded into audiology in New Zealand
2021 Opened in Canada
9
Our annual review 2023 - 2024
Being the place we are
all proud to belong
Specsavers is, and always will be, a company built on great
people: the ongoing hard work, energy and passion of every
one of our near 50,000-strong team.
We have an unrelenting focus on making Specsavers a special
place for everyone: from those who work in our global support
teams and supply chain sites to our teams in local optical,
audiology, ophthalmology and domiciliary businesses.
With a global ambition to be a place we are all proud
to belong, we take great pride and responsibility in creating
an environment where our people can be inspired by our
purpose, thrive in the work they do, and make a real dierence.
Our people
10
Our annual review 2023 - 2024
Creating
a great place
to work
We work hard to create a consistent approach to what it means
to be part of Specsavers and ensure everyone is listened
to and feels included, valued, and motivated.
Our teams in Northern Europe, Australia and New Zealand
have been taking part in Great Place to Work® (GPTW) surveys
for a few years, but during 2023 we extended the invitation
to all colleagues and partners globally for the first time.
The annual survey is conducted by GPTW® for more than
10,000 workplaces across the world, all aiming to be awarded
the coveted accreditation.
We’ve celebrated some incredible successes over the last year,
being certified as an oicial Great Place to Work® in all 12 surveyed
countries and recognised on several Best Workplaces™ lists:
Being a great place to work is more than just
something we say, it’s something we aim to
make a reality for our colleagues and partners
every day, wherever they work. Our focus
continues to be on creating an exceptional
experience for our teams and our customers.
Pauline Best
Chief People Oicer
11
Our Danish business,
Louis Nielsen,
was announced as
for the second consecutive year.
Denmark’s
Best Workplace
We were crowned as
Finland’s Best
Workplace
rising from our previous
position at number five.
We were awarded
the third spot on
Norway’s list,
for the second year running.
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Our people
But, to us, being a great place to work isn’t about a survey and
scores - it’s woven into our purpose and our values; it’s a belief
that shapes the focus and energy of our people agenda.
Giving everyone the opportunity to share their views on being
part of Specsavers and their suggestions for improvement not
only supports us in shaping our global continuous listening
strategy, but also helps to determine how we can ultimately
make Specsavers one of the world’s greatest workplaces.
Top right: Our team in Helsinki
celebrating their position as Finland’s
Best Workplace.
Bottom left: Canadian colleagues
at the Great Place to Work® awards.
We were titled the
eighth best workplace
in Australia
We were ranked
number 23 in the UK,
25 in the
Republic of Ireland
and within
Canada’s top 100
- a significant accomplishment
given it was our first year
taking part in these countries.
And named
as number nine in
Sweden
Our Northern Europe
support oice in Copenhagen
also made Denmark’s list,
coming in at
number 10
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Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Our people
The Specsavers 7 leadership
programme, now available
across the majority of regions,
continues to benefit thousands
of partners. It concentrates
on enhancing seven key skills
that we believe are required to
thrive and lead eectively as part
of our unique partnership model.
Nurturing our
partnership
The Specsavers partnership – our steadfast belief that the
highest standards of care and performance can only be achieved
by businesses owned and run by hands-on leaders – underpins
our success. Our team of almost 5,500 driven and expert
partners worldwide lead and inspire their people to make
a dierence every day.
We remain focused on supporting and nurturing our existing
partnership while also attracting and preparing potential
partners of the future. Our global development programmes
are tailored in regions to support local needs and ensure our
leaders are set up for success:
Following its launch in 2022, we have seen even greater
participation in Australia and New Zealand’s Partner Continuing
Leadership Development (PCLD) programme. During 2023/24,
98% of partners participated to improve their capabilities,
with 65% dedicating at least 32 PCLD hours and a further 21%
investing more than 64 hours to enhance their skills.
Partner development in our newest trading region, Canada, has
been focused on developing and enhancing leadership skills.
A new series of workshops equip partners with a comprehensive
understanding of eective strategies and practical tools to help
them create the best possible workplace for their teams.
In addition, a new Coaching for Performance programme
in collaboration with Mindbeat, gave Canadian partners the
opportunity to benefit from a combination of one-to-one
and group coaching sessions. Those involved provided hugely
positive feedback about accelerating their development
in this way.
New partners in the UK attended the inaugural Welcome
to Partnership – an eight-week programme of guided learning
and personalised support that includes a two-day residential
to boost leadership skills and provide board-level insight
into becoming a successful Specsavers partner.
For those aspiring to partnership, we oer Specsavers Pathway.
Our popular in-house development programme continues
to provide an internal pipeline into the partnership. A success
in all our markets, Pathway candidates receive bespoke training
and support in preparation for formal appointment. Last year,
the programme resulted in hundreds of graduates globally
- with 98 candidates in ANZ alone - who are now ready to move
into business ownership either in their own region or, supported
by our international recruitment team, across the globe.
For colleagues in audiology, we launched the Practitioner
Career Pat hway. During the past 12 months, we welcomed more
than 60 new audiology partners into our UK business,
with 50% joining via this new route.
13
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Our people
Providing opportunities for partners to connect, collaborate
and celebrate with each other as well as leaders from our
support oice teams, and hear first-hand about our strategic
direction, is a critical component of our partnership model.
Annual regional seminars are supplemented by a regular
communications meeting cycle, both in-person and online.
Partners are given post-event materials to help brief their
teams, ensuring store colleagues also understand the vital role
they play in bringing our plans to life.
We continually review the eectiveness and eiciency of
our communications schedule. For example, we now combine
audiology and optics meetings in all relevant regions.
Feedback highlights how partners value the opportunity
to share and learn from each other across the two
clinical disciplines.
But it’s not only about creating opportunities for partners
to hear about approved plans and activity: two-way engagement
is increasingly important. With many partners in key consultative
roles across all our markets, representative forums, user groups
or advisory councils ensure their voices play a meaningful role
in decision making, operational planning and strategy creation.
We also encourage feedback and invite ideas through our
partner satisfaction surveys across all regions, working with
a global expert in the field of franchise and joint-venture
relationships. The results of our 2023 customised survey were
hugely positive for the second consecutive year, with scores
well above the global sector benchmark for businesses
operating under a shared brand. In the UK, we ranked within
the 74th percentile while Northern Europe, Australia,
and New Zealand were in the 80th percentile*.
14
Partners at annual seminars across our regions.
*Survey completed by Franchise
Relationships Institute, Victoria, Australia
Everyone at Specsavers has unique strengths, experiences and
capabilities to oer. Our approach to personal development,
supported learning and career opportunities therefore needs
to be varied, extensive and flexible. Our unwavering commitment
to investing in our people means we ensure inspiring and
fulfilling careers are accessible to all: from performing a clinical
role in store or working across our supply chain, to leading one
of our support teams or travelling regularly as part
of a field-based role.
Across all areas of our business, and as part of our Future Ready
People priority, we provide a variety of impactful learning and
development experiences to help strengthen the capabilities
we have today and build the skills we know we will need for
tomorrow. Optimising and harnessing our talent in this way
continues to be a strong focus for us to support our purpose
and realise our strategy.
As part of an ongoing commitment to continually evolve how
we approach learning at Specsavers and keep abreast
of the very latest technology, we embarked on an experiment
using augmented reality development tools at some of our
manufacturing and distribution sites and partnered with
a content aggregator to help bring a wealth of digital learning
to life for our support colleagues.
We advanced our in-house global leadership development oer
to support our senior leaders in accelerating their own personal
growth. Last year, the activity focused on both essential and
personalised learning. The former is aligned directly to our
leadership model to ensure leaders are set up for success:
not only with the right capabilities, but arguably more
importantly, the right behaviours to lead in such a dynamic
and ever-changing world. This is enhanced by personalised
development which empowers leaders to select options that
best suit their individual goals and style such as diagnostics
and coaching.
We held our inaugural Accelerate event with 120 of our global
senior leaders to help shape and drive our strategy. Attendees
dedicated two days to immersing themselves in the detail
of our future thinking while exploring how they can work
together to deliver plans eectively, and at pace. With plenty
of opportunities to contribute to, and collaborate on, key areas
of our Long-Term Framework, critical actions were established
on where we need to focus to move forward.
We continued to embed our values and behaviours into the
Specsavers culture, ensuring they help to define the fundamental
ways of working for everyone. By being collaborative, curious,
courageous, commercial, and compassionate, we work together
to bring our purpose to life in the right way, and with the right
Supporting
and developing
our teams
I feel much
better connected,
especially in
terms of being
enabled to pass
key messages
down through
my teams.
Accelerate 2023 attendee
15
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Our people
spirit. Last year, to support our leadership community
in leading by example, we agreed a series of leadership
expectations linked to each of our behaviours, clarifying how
we are all expected to lead both our teams and our ambitions
towards future success.
While our Great Place to Work® survey results tell us that
inclusion is an area of strength for us, we are always striving
to do more. Recognising that everyone has a role to play
in creating a truly inclusive culture at work, we launched
our first-ever global development oer focused on inclusion.
Partnering with subject experts, we created emotive
and powerful learning experiences, designed to resonate
with everyone, regardless of location, position or experience.
Practical, interactive workshops were oered to all our
leaders helping them to lead more inclusively and understand
opportunities to create and nurture more diverse teams.
This was closely followed by people manager sessions
and an eModule for colleagues. Initially available in the UK,
managers and colleagues in every region will be able
to benefit during 2024 as part of the global rollout.
Our reward strategy is paramount in attracting and retaining
the right people to deliver our purpose. We benchmark
all roles globally twice a year to inform our salary review
processes as part of our commitment to paying colleagues
competitively and equitably. We also regularly appraise
our total reward oering to ensure our teams receive
the right benefits and support.
As part of this, we value everyone who chooses to be a part
of Specsavers. Last year we enhanced our long service awards,
not only to align globally, but also to recognise achievements
ranging from one to 40 years in a way that is meaningful
to the person celebrating their anniversary.
Globally, we’re focused on growing our own talent in two ways
– through talent development (enabling our people
to grow and stretch to be the best they can be in their
current role, developing skills for now and in the future)
and talent acceleration (supporting people to get ready faster
and to take on their next, more senior, role, sooner).
A new talent acceleration oer has been launched, initially
to senior management, to fast-track the skills and capability
development of high-performing individuals across our
support teams and help us create a strong pool of internal
talent for succession planning. Our ambition is to have
talent accelerant opportunities at all levels across
our global support team.
Y
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YEARS
16
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Our people
Growing talent from within Specsavers is a core part of how
we work. Not only to ensure successors for the future of our
business, but also to support the dierent hopes and ambitions
of our people by proactively encouraging the right development
and career paths. A key component of this is our Talent Review
meetings that take place throughout the year across all regions
and functions, helping us to shine a spotlight on our people and
deeply understand their capabilities and aspirations. These also
feed into a global, board-level review to provide an all-important
organisational view of our succession pipeline to support future
needs. It’s also a valuable way to identify how we can further
support colleagues to be at their best, as well as recognise
rising stars and help them reach their full potential.
In the last 12 months, almost one in four of our leadership
population will have benefited from the stretch of a role change,
within or outside their function or region, as a result.
Within our global marketing function, we designed our own
in-house development programme - Specsavers Academy
of Marketing. The Academy invests in every single colleague
globally, no matter their role, to help them thrive in the
work they do. With a focus on continually building skills and
capabilities while enabling our teams to remain up-to-date
on current marketing best practice, the programme further
heightens the professional expertise of our people.
Supporting our store teams to become skilled and confident
experts in their field is vital to ensure they can continue to make
a positive dierence to our customers’ lives. Impactful training
covers a vast range of topics - from clinical support, including
myopia management and dispensing, to retail skills such as
frame-styling. Key to managing this is investment in our digital
platforms, a network of regional trainers as well as in-store
trainers who inspire and encourage colleagues every day.
There was impressive commitment to development in all our
regions over the past year: our online learning management
system, iLearn, logged the completion of more than 800,000
modules by store colleagues in Australia and New Zealand alone.
Providing engaging and meaningful inductions for new store
teams has been a key focus in Canada. The tailored New Store
onboarding programme involves both the theory and practice
of how to create amazing experiences at every stage of the
customer journey, with hands-on exposure to our clinical
technology. This is complemented by Commissioning Week,
which includes merchandising and preparing a store for opening,
to create a sense of ownership and build excitement ahead
of the first trading day. Post-onboarding, all colleagues have
access to a comprehensive curriculum of learning resources
on our new localised system, Specsavers Academy.
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Our people
18
Supporting our people to deliver the highest standards
of customer care means investing in their continued clinical
education. We hold specialist conferences annually to provide
high-quality, interactive learning for thousands of optical
practitioners and audiology clinicians around the world.
Record numbers of delegates attended our Professional
Advancement Conference (PAC) in the UK, where they were
joined by more than 40 industry exhibitors. Colleagues came
together for discussion workshops, peer reviews, lecture
sessions and practical skills workshops covering subjects such
as glaucoma progression management and the provision of
eyecare for those experiencing homelessness. We also ran
hugely successful hybrid MiniPAC events featuring large-scale
in-person events across the UK and Republic of Ireland, as well
as online sessions. Combined, these events delivered 40,000
CPD (continuing professional development) points. We have now
created more than 200 original pieces of accredited learning
and provided over 100,000 points to Specsavers’ registrants
during the current General Optical Council CPD cycle.
Professional
development
Optical and audiology practitioners attending our clincal events and conferences.
Top left: ©FRANCESCO VICENZI, Organic Photo.
19
3,000
participants benefitted from
our Clinical Conferences across
Northern Europe and ANZ.
The ANZ Specsavers Clinical Conference, now in its 12th year,
welcomed almost 1,000 optometrists in person and online.
An impressive line-up of renowned speakers and industry
experts imparted specialist knowledge on optometric practice,
with topics ranging from disease diagnosis and patient
communication to collaborative care. In addition, we held a series
of dispensing conferences with a focus on dispensing to children.
This further improved the expertise of our store teams by giving
them hands-on experience measuring faces and frames for
younger customers.
2023 saw the return of our face-to-face Clinical Conferences
across four countries in Northern Europe following a move online
during the pandemic and subsequent hybrid formats. More
than 2,000 participants, including store partners, optometrists,
ophthalmologists and clinical lecturers, enjoyed coming together
once again for live interactive learning and valuable
networking opportunities.
Our accredited courses, oered to store teams across the UK
and Republic of Ireland, have gone from strength to strength
with the launch of our unique build-your-own Level 3 BTEC
Certificate. This innovative, externally accredited and
nationally-recognised qualification delivers a range of
role-specific training, with more than 1,500 colleagues enrolled
so far. We also introduced a new Cert 4 Plus option, which allows
our rising stars to gain a Level 4 BTEC qualification in just over
nine months, before progressing to year two of the Fellowship
Dispensing Diploma in Ophthalmic Dispensing.
More than 1,200 optometrists in Australia and New Zealand
took part in our Trusted Experts Series. A range of workshops,
masterclasses and eModules were designed around
recommending great products and enabling more people
to access our care through an eicient customer journey.
Our three apprenticeship schemes - Optical Assistant,
Spectacle Maker and Customer Service - employ more than
500 apprentices and are a brilliant way to combine on-the-job
training and skills development with supported study. We were
thrilled to have these programmes appraised as ‘outstanding’
by the Oice for Standards in Education (Ofsted). We were the
only optical and retail training employer to receive this rating
and one of just eight overall employers graded at the highest
level. We were also ranked 22nd in the Apprenticeships Top 100
Employers 2023 list, the highest placed retailer in the UK.
We further developed our graduate scheme for Denmark,
Sweden and Norway, and launched the same opportunity for
the first time in Finland. We worked in consultation with local
universities to ensure a continued ailiation between academic
study and optometric practice.
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Our people
20
The programme includes training sessions, attendance at our
Clinical Conference and an educational excursion. Last year,
the latter involved a visit to the Innovation Center (InnoK)
- a research, development and innovation factory in Budapest -
to witness the production of contact lenses first-hand
and learn more about the products.
We maintained our close relationships with universities
across Australia and New Zealand to promote optometry
and support our future talent pipeline. This supports our
position as an employer of choice, as we saw 54% of final-year
students from our eight ailiated optometry schools choose
Specsavers. As a result, we welcomed a record 247 graduate
optometrists onto our two-year development programme.
Twenty-three of these recently qualified professionals (more
than half the first graduating cohort) were from the University
of Western Australia, following our support to develop a new
Doctor of Optometry degree in 2021.
Ollie Phillips working at Specsavers Exeter as part of our UK apprenticeship scheme.
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Our people
21
We’re committed to creating and maintaining a fully inclusive
workplace culture - where everyone feels welcome and valued.
Our comprehensive global diversity and inclusion (D&I) plan
has gone from strength to strength, supported by a variety
of colleague network groups and D&I forums across all our
regions. For example, through the eorts of our MenoTalk
network, we were accredited as a Menopause Friendly
Employer in 2023.
We also have D&I Leads in each region, responsible for
implementing local activity, such as our inclusion development
oer, and the gathering of demographic data to ensure our plans
are fully representative of those who work with us.
Focusing
on diversity
and inclusion
At Specsavers, we recognise the importance
of celebrating NAIDOC Week and learning more
about First Nations cultures and histories.
This year we were fortunate to hear from First
Nations leader Thomas Mayo, who helped our
colleagues learn more about Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander peoples
Cathy Rennie-Matos
NAIDOC Week lead and Head of Sustainability
22
Alongside these groups and leads, we have broadened our
approach over the past 12 months to cultivate an environment
that respects and values dierence. For example, we:
Introduced salary transparency for some support oice roles
in the UK, Guernsey and Republic of Ireland to help attract
more diverse candidates.
Became a member of the Diversity Charter in Sweden and
launched monthly D&I Co-Chair Connects to share best practice.
Celebrated NAIDOC Week in Australia, which recognises the
history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander peoples.
We shared a global report highlighting our gender pay data for
2022 from across our regions. We also continued to publish our
legislative requirements, where our 2023 UK gender pay gap
report showed that there have been positive moves in both
mean and median pay across our UK support operations and
Vision Labs manufacturing site.
To continue our progress, we introduced new global talent
principles and guidelines ensuring fairness and transparency
to support gender balance, and indeed our general diversity
and inclusion activity. In addition to actively encouraging diverse
hiring panels, we instigated a 50/50 representation of male/
female candidates wherever possible when shortlisting for
senior roles. And last year, 62% of director-level promotions
were women. An acknowledgement of our work in these areas
was being recognised as a Great Place to Work® for women
in both the Republic of Ireland and Canada.
62%
of all director-level
promotions last year
were women.
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Our people
We recognise the importance of, and our responsibility for,
helping our people – whether in stores, supply chain or across
our support teams - to proactively manage their wellbeing.
As part of our global programme, we focus on a dierent area
of wellbeing – emotional, financial, physical and social
– each quarter, giving colleagues targeted support, guidance
and tools. During 2023, this was enhanced by inviting external
speakers to share their expertise on topics such as sleep,
loneliness and resilience. The series of live events and recordings
were a huge success and will be continued on an ongoing basis.
We also introduced Wellbeing Question of the Month
– a thought-provoking activity aligned to our quarterly
themes, encouraging colleagues to talk more openly
with their peers and managers.
Regular wellness initiatives and activities take place across
our business with great success. For example, our global supply
chain function took part in a physical challenge, where teams
collectively tracked five million steps in just two weeks.
In addition, after moving to our new oice in Vancouver,
we prioritised the provision of a dedicated wellbeing space
to benefit colleagues during the working day.
We continued to oer free subscriptions to Headspace,
a mindfulness and meditation app, following its global launch
in 2021. Complimentary licences are also available to colleagues’
friends and families to help even more people benefit from
valuable support. We saw four million minutes of usage across
the platform over the past year and targeted our messaging
to share specific programmes, such as mindful parenting, which
were aligned to our wellbeing quarters and awareness activity.
We were hugely encouraged by the first set of global
results from our 2023 Great Place to Work® surveys.
Our wellbeing index score across all regions and populations
was 75%, demonstrating that our people experience a positive
environment where they are supported to be at their best.
Caring about
wellbeing
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Our people
2
Transforming the
experience to be loved
by every customer
We continue to change lives through better sight and hearing
for more people than ever before. Our unwavering clinical care
and expertise, underpinned by a consistent desire to deliver
great value, means we have gained the trust and loyalty
of almost 45 million customers worldwide who benefit from
our first-class optical, audiology, and ophthalmic services.
During the past 12 months alone, we served more than
23.5 million of our customers either online, in-store or at home.
Our customers
24
Our annual review 2023 - 2024
25
Enhancing
our oer
The direction of our business always starts with customers
at the forefront. It’s not simply about responding to
ever-advancing expectations, it’s about predicting these
needs and keeping ahead. By 2030, we expect the
overwhelming majority of our customer experiences to involve
both digital and oline channels, which is why our priority
is to focus on developing a seamless blended journey between
the two. Our commitment to enhancing the customer journey
through blended interactions is paving the way for a future
where customers can engage with us eortlessly, while still
enjoying the value and expertise they’ve come to trust.
Over the past year, we saw a total of 11.5 million appointments
made online, proving that many customers around the globe
benefit from the ease and convenience of booking their sight
or hearing tests in this way. To strengthen this, we further
evolved our online system with the rollout of Alternative Store.
The new service, which makes it easy for customers to explore
appointment options across more than one adjacent Specsavers
store, has resulted in thousands of additional bookings.
We work hard to continually advance our digitally interactive
options. Our popular virtual Try-On technology, used by
approximately three million customers globally each year,
enables people to sample our products before visiting
a store: a great opportunity for customers to play around
with styles and preferences in their own time.
Last year, we launched an enhanced solution across all our
websites using trailblazing diminished reality frame removal
technology. The live functionality oers a much simpler
and faster user experience. The special diminished reality
feature ‘erases’ physical glasses worn by the customer at the
time, allowing them to try new frames virtually and still see
clearly for the first time – a huge benefit for those
with higher prescriptions.
We made great strides in the roll-out of optical coherence
tomography (OCT) across even more Northern European
countries, joining all our other markets across the world.
Leading the way in clinical care, we became the first optometry
chain in Denmark to begin oering OCT, where it is now available
across all stores in the country, and introduced the service
at 10 stores in Finland.
This follows its inclusion as part of the standard eye test
in all our Norwegian stores which was launched during 2021.
The technology enables us to transform the way we care for
our customers’ eye health as the non-invasive, detailed 3D
scans of the retina mean our optometrists can detect certain
eye conditions up to four years earlier than traditional
imaging methods.
1.8
million
visitors to our website
every week.
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Our customers
26
The whole experience has been amazing.
We are very lucky in Worcestershire
to have such talented professionals working
in a system that is designed to help the
patient: my vision is so much better now.
A Newmedica patient at Worcester
The introduction of ultra-widefield (UWF) imaging in conjunction
with OCT for our eye test oering in Canada was used
at scale for the first time in any of our markets. Our pilot
using the technology demonstrated enhanced detection
of sight-threatening peripheral conditions in advance
of symptoms.
To improve access in remote or hard-to-recruit areas,
we grew tele-optometry last year. Conducting eye tests in
this way enables optometrists to assess customers’ eye health,
identify potential issues, and provide relevant advice without
needing to be in the same location. The service is now live
in Sweden, Australia, Canada, the UK and the Netherlands
where last year we carried out more than 37,000 tests via
remote triaging tests for Dutch customers alone. This is
a fantastic step towards the delivery of even greater care
in the Netherlands, where customers have traditionally received
eye tests without the added eye health assessment.
In Sweden, we also use clinical delegation through automated
refraction by qualified clinical assistants. This further increases
appointment availability and reduces waiting times for our
customers as optometrists can focus on more advanced
and in-depth eye health analysis.
We announced an exciting new partnership with international
e-commerce organisation, Waldo. Their mission to provide great
value and convenience through a simple, web-based contact lens
oer naturally aligns with our ambition to serve our customers
in diverse ways to suit their ever-evolving needs.
As one of the leading providers of NHS-funded ophthalmology
services in the UK, our Newmedica partnership continues to
grow. Operating from 29 sites in England, Newmedica oers
services to more than 290,000 NHS and private patients and
covers the major adult sub-specialities of cataracts, glaucoma,
medical retina and age-related macular degeneration. We also
oer services for patients with private insurance or those
wishing to self-pay.
Tele-optometry in action.
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Our customers
27
During 2023/24, we opened a further three ophthalmology joint
ventures, helping even more patients gain access to the highest
standards of clinical care, conveniently and quickly. Our eye
health clinics and surgical centres are all locally owned and led
by experts who conducted more than 292,000 appointments
or surgeries and performed 81,000 cataract operations over the
past 12 months. We’re hugely proud of the outstanding patient
outcomes achieved by our teams, with a posterior capsule
rupture (PCR) rate of just 0.27%, which is less than a third of
the national benchmark and the lowest of any consultant-grade
surgery provider in the UK.
We’re passionate about investing in the future of ophthalmology.
Our Newmedica clinical supervisors supported placements
for 23 doctors in training and work with integrated care
boards or NHS deaneries to identify further candidates.
We ran 52 continuing professional development (CPD) events
for community optometrists and dispensing opticians. We also
oered pre-registration support to 130 optometrists through
the observation of outpatient clinics and examining
patients who presented with various pathologies.
We commissioned our 2023 Access to Care report in the UK,
which highlighted the vital role of primary optical and audiology
services in delivering equitable access to community healthcare.
Poor sight and hearing are associated with a multitude of
additional issues, such as social isolation and loneliness,
which in turn can lead to other damaging health conditions
including clinical depression, diabetes and dementia. Examples in
the report from each UK nation show that Specsavers’
community healthcare can reduce pressure on GPs, release
capacity in hospitals and support the health service to deliver
more care, closer to home, at the earliest opportunity
and at lower cost.
Alongside key professional groups, we’re committed to making
a dierence by identifying areas of opportunity, campaigning for
change, especially where access to services is patchy due
to regionalised financial arrangements, and ultimately leading
the charge to improve in the nation’s eye and hearing health.
To support this, we invested vital resources and funding
in the UK to:
99%
of patients say that they
would recommend Newmedica
to their friends and family.
Capture
more than
7.7 million
optical coherence
tomography
(OCT) scans
Assess the
eyes of more than
700,000
people with
diabetes
Refer almost
100,000
people for glaucoma-
related pathology,
helping to safeguard
their sight.
Complete
240,000
wax removal
services
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Our customers
28
Working alongside our optometry partners and clinical leaders,
we instigated national surveys to understand the behaviours
and trends that impact Canadian eye health. Using the findings,
we delivered engaging and informative content on national
TV programmes, regional print media and on our social channels.
We also published a four-part series on eye health in Canada’s
leading newspaper to raise awareness on the importance
of regular sight tests, highlighting that 75% of vision loss
is preventable and treatable as well as the importance
of early detection.
KeepSight is Australia’s solution to preventing diabetes-related
sight loss through regular eye tests and early treatment.
In partnership with the Australian Government Department
of Health, Diabetes Australia and other industry players
we helped implement the programme in 2018. Since then,
our optometrists have submitted one million appointment
registrations to the KeepSight patient database. This enables
patients to receive clear reminders from Diabetes Australia
when their eye tests are due if they don’t return following
a recall message from Specsavers.
Across our markets, we’re always enhancing how we connect
with customers and make our mission of changing lives through
better sight and hearing accessible to even more people.
In a tough economic environment, our customers are facing
significant financial pressures. Our relentless focus on best-in-
market pricing and promotions combined with world-leading
expertise ensures we can respond to the current climate and
really make a dierence in our communities.
The launch of our new customer experience platform
– InMoment - complemented by industry-leading AI analysis has
helped us to better understand customer sentiment which is
hugely important to us. Through the use of both email and SMS
surveys, we are collecting more feedback than ever before and
have continued to see our Net Promoter Score (NPS) increase
across all markets.
Our popular marketing campaigns continue to go from strength
to strength, driving great brand awareness. A new iteration
of promotions using the iconic Should’ve Gone to Specsavers
tagline proved an instant hit in the UK, especially when we
previewed the advert with a million of our existing customers
for the first time as a thank you for their loyalty.
In Australia and New Zealand, the launch of Should’ve Gone
with Contacts oered an amusing suite of marketing materials
Reaching
more
customers
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Our customers
29
based on exaggerated scenarios where contact lenses may have
been a better option: imagine a wrestler finding himself rather
compromised when his glasses slide o mid-headlock. Aimed at
customers in the 18-30s age bracket, the humorous approach
had a great impact in showcasing the breadth of our products
and services to this audience.
We also evolved our social and PR approach, taking Should’ve
Gone to Specsavers as well as eye and ear health campaigns
to new audiences through witty tone of voice, bold content
marketing and stigma-challenging stunts.
We saw incredible growth last year in our newest market
Canada: from our first store opening in December 2021
to now having 110 businesses trading across three provinces.
Building on our initial success in making Specsavers a household
name, we strengthened our position as an expert clinical
provider by highlighting our oer of world-class optical eye test
technology, OCT, to Canadian customers. The campaign, a first
of its kind for the industry, involved a series of playful adverts
recognising what a mouthful optical coherence tomography
(OCT) can be to pronounce while delivering an important
message. Although not everyone may be able to say it, everyone
can experience it as part of our standard eye test, benefitting
from early detection of certain eye conditions such as glaucoma.
This led to a phenomenal 66% increase in appointment bookings.
The success of our domiciliary business continues with some
amazing milestones and achievements realised over the last
12 months. We celebrated 10 years of providing clinical care
to people who may not be able to access our services in the
usual way. From acquiring Healthcall in 2013 to becoming the
market leader in home visits in 2016 and having 46 partnerships
across the UK today, we’ve conducted more than one million
eye tests by visiting 786,000 customers who are unable
to visit our stores unaided.
Last year alone, 20% more customers benefitted from this
vital service compared to 2022/23 as we continued to expand
our clinic capacity and launched audiology home visits in
an increasing number of areas. Our teams referred more
than 20,000 patients for treatment to safeguard their sight
and dispensed 250,000 pairs of glasses to people in the
comfort of their own homes.
Following its previous success in the UK and Australia,
we extended our Owned and Run campaign to our Northern
European market. Highlighting how proud we are of our
partnership model, it explains to customers that when they visit
any one of our stores across the globe, they aren’t just stepping
inside a ‘generic Specsavers’ but are entering a local business
owned and run by professional experts.
1 million
eye-tests conducted
and 786,000 customers
visited through our
domicilliary business.
Providing clinical care to a customer
in her own home through our
domiciliary service.
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Our customers
30
As more people than ever choose Specsavers, ongoing
investment in our stores is critical in order to provide the
very best environment and experience for our customers,
partners and colleagues.
Operating in ever-changing retail and competitor landscapes
means we must continually evolve to accommodate rising
customer numbers and oer world-class services and
clinical care.
This not only involves enhancing our accessibility and availability
for customers by opening new businesses, all fitted out to the
highest specification, but also investing heavily in revamping
the look and feel of our stores, in both design and technology.
Last year, we invested £60 million in store enhancement activity
by completing 392 relocation, expansion or refit projects
across our existing portfolio. This included the provision
of 72 new test/pre-test rooms in our Northern European
region alone as well as upgrades and capacity reinvestments
for 58% of stores across Australia and New Zealand.
Designing
world-class
stores
Our new Billings Bridge store
in Ottawa, Canada
88
new stores globally in 2023/2024
with the majority, 63%, in our
newest market, Canada.
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Our customers
31
It was another successful year for frame development and
design as we sold more than 24.3 million glasses worldwide
by oering our customers unbeatable choice and value to suit
varying styles, preferences and budgets.
As part of our global focus on ensuring we have a great selection
of well-known brands, we continued to introduce new products
as well as refresh and extend existing ranges throughout the
year. This further strengthened our popular designer portfolio
which includes MARC JACOBS, HUGO, Tommy Hilfiger
and Vivienne Westwood.
An exciting global collaboration was with premium British
heritage brand Barbour. The collection embodies Barbour’s
iconic countryside style, featuring vintage shapes and signature
quilting print details. Following the successful debut across
stores in Australia and New Zealand at the beginning of 2024,
a global rollout is underway and will be available in all regions
by the end of the year.
We celebrated the 40th anniversary of fashion house
Viktor&Rolf by introducing two limited-edition frames across
all our markets. This was an instant hit with customers,
with one specific style being so popular that it sold out
in a record-breaking five weeks in the UK.
Regional-specific launches are an equally important part
of our frame strategy. They provide a recognisable and appealing
product oer for our customers, ensuring we stay relevant
in all our markets.
Focus
on frames
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Our customers
Specsavers customers across Northern Europe were exclusively
treated to a new high-fashion product with the introduction of
ANDMORE. Developed in-house by our design team, the 18 new
frames were a huge success, and it became the region’s best-
selling female brand within its first two weeks.
Mimco, an accessory fashion brand with huge appeal in Australia
and New Zealand was launched in local stores last year. Our
team created a unique oer where attention to detail was key;
from jewellery influences linked to Mimco’s lifestyle products to
the exquisite shapes and materials used. This proved incredibly
successful, with sales outperforming forecast by 2:1.
We also celebrated 10 years of partnership with Australian
fashion designer Collette Dinnigan by releasing a limited-edition
anniversary frame range. Influenced by life on the Italian Riviera,
the collection oers unique and elegant styles featuring Art
Deco touches.
We launched our first-ever local designer brand in Canada,
borne out of a desire to oer an outdoors lifestyle option
exclusively for the Canadian market. Columbia, inspired by
everyday adventure, was brilliantly received by our partners
and customers alike, quickly becoming the number one
men’s brand in the region within a fortnight.
Working with Viktor&Rolf to develop the
latest range as well as collaborating on
the associated PR events was tremendous.
There was huge excitement among our
store colleagues and customers alike.
Matt Stewart
Global Frames Development Director
Iconic British brand Vivienne Westwood
continues to be a popular range
in our designer portfolio.
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Our customers
33
Working in conjunction with industry specialists, we further
improved our children’s oer to ensure we have the best-fitting
products in the most exciting styles to meet the needs of our
youngest customers. Following the introduction of ReWear
in 2022, our environmentally conscious portfolio partially made
from recycled, post-consumer plastic waste, we expanded the
range with our first sustainable kids’ collection. Featuring six
frames, all fully aligned to our children’s fit principles, which are
optimised for low bridges and small face parameters to ensure
the perfect positioning of lenses.
Disney continues to be our most popular brand in the kids’
market. Young action-hero, sci-fi fans were treated to new
Marvel and Star Wars-themed choices and a Stitch-inspired
frame appealed to character-mad children, becoming an
instant best-seller as sales outperformed forecast by 250%.
Reducing the environmental impact of our products remains
a firm priority. We’re aiming for 100% of our global frame range
across all price points to be made using more sustainable
materials by 2030. We’re also working closely with our suppliers
to understand together how we can introduce more sustainable
ways to produce our products.
Our children’s oer encompasses
great quality, style and value.
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Our customers
55
The ongoing growth and enhancement of our global
ophthalmic lens portfolio saw our manufacturing
and distribution sites supply almost 52 million lenses
last year to Specsavers stores worldwide.
MiYOSMART ophthalmic lenses for children are now available
in most of our regions with global volumes increasing
by 102% year on year. The innovative lenses feature
technology that focuses light in a dierent way to standard
glasses which may help reduce eye elongation and
potentially minimise the likelihood of short-sightedness
further developing.
For children who prefer not to wear glasses, or for use
during sports, we also oer specially designed myopia
management daily disposable contact lenses. MiSight® 1 day,
now available in all our markets, continues to be a popular
option and we have fitted more than 6,500 children
with the product to date in the UK alone.
With ever-growing demand in the global contact lens market,
focus in this area continues to be an important part of our
product and service oering. Last year, we introduced a new
contact lens to our trusted and exclusive easyvision core
range. The addition of easyvision elision, which was initially
launched in the UK, further enhances customer choice
and is now being rolled out across all other markets.
In Northern Europe, we introduced four mirrored sun
lenses - a fashionable, anti-reflective coating that can
be added to sunglasses. Available in blue, red, gold and silver,
they can also be combined with with polarising lenses
to give customers the ultimate pair of sunglasses.
Progress
in lenses
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Our customers
35
Our audiology business, available in the UK, Republic of Ireland,
Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand, enjoyed another
successful year as we delighted even more customers
with access to the highest-quality hearing care products
and clinical services. Dispensing almost three quarters of
a million hearing aids globally, we continued to grow our
capacity and change the industry for the better by oering
the best possible value in the provision of audiology outcomes.
Our fastest area of growth last year was in Australia
and New Zealand, where customers can now benefit from
best-value hearing care in almost 80% of our stores in the
region. We celebrated a record year, with a 30% volume
increase on 2022/23.
Our Dutch business continues to go from strength
to strength and we saw a 17% increase in sales last year.
The growth enabled us to invest further in this area and
ultimately make a dierence to even more customers.
For example, a new online referral system, which we developed
alongside leading otorhinolaryngologists (ear, nose, and throat
specialists) has significantly reduced pressure and footfall
on busy specialist healthcare services and greatly improved
the process for thousands of customers.
We also established a foundation to research and raise
awareness of how people can fade out of society if they have
untreated hearing loss. The goal of our Stop Fade Out initiative
is to support social participation for those with hearing
impairments.
We further expanded within our domiciliary partnerships.
With plans to accelerate this roll-out over the next 12 months,
we are committed to enhancing such a vital service which
helps some of our most vulnerable customers with their
hearing needs.
Keeping at the forefront of latest innovations is key for us
to oer technologically advanced products to our customers
as they come to the market. Last year, we broadened our
portfolio with the addition of next-generation Bluetooth®
LE Audio. The new standard for connectivity enables multiple
simultaneous connections and hands-free calls with other
compatible devices as well as higher sound quality
with significantly lower battery consumption.
In addition, we introduced AuracastTM broadcast audio,
which transforms how people experience sound in both
public and private locations. It allows users to hear important
announcements in places such as airports through their
hearing aids, stream audio whenever they wish, and share
audio with family and friends.
Advancements
in audiology
of our stores across the UK
and Republic of Ireland oer
audiology services.
96%
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Our customers
Investment in our integrated supply chain continues to be
a vital component of our growing business. Maximising eiciency
and productivity enable us to support our partners and store
teams in their delivery of quality, best value products quickly
and reliably around the globe, as well as exceptional service
to customers.
Last year, we increased capacity across all sites so that we can
continue to position ourselves ahead of customer demand.
Each week, our 14 manufacturing and distribution facilities
supply more than one million ophthalmic lenses to our stores
all over the world.
36
The launch of quick speech-in-noise (QuickSIN) testing across all
our audiology markets helps customers make a more informed
choice when purchasing hearing aids. The test measures the
ability to distinguish speech amongst background noise
- a challenge many of our customers face. It also more accurately
advises our clinicians on the type of hearing instruments
required and whether an additional device, such as a remote
microphone, would better meet a customer’s needs.
In the UK and Republic of Ireland, we provided micro-suction
earwax removal to more than 300,000 private and NHS patients:
a sixfold increase since 2019. The hugely popular and eective
service is carried out by clinically trained and accredited
audiology professionals, helping to further prevent ear
health and hearing issues by safely removing excess
or stubborn earwax.
We rolled out a new audiology practice management system,
Auditdata, across all our UK stores, which is already successfully
used in our Australian, New Zealand and Dutch businesses.
As the first phase in our programme of global upgrades,
this will ensure each region benefits from the latest
technology and functionality available with a leading
audiology software provider.
We embarked on a successful partnership with 80s music
legend Rick Astley, who re-recorded his well-known hit
Never Gonna Give You Up with some commonly misheard
lyrics to demonstrate the challenges of hearing loss. This had
a significant impact in raising awareness of our provision
and expertise: generating 193 million combined impressions
(views, likes, mentions on social platforms) and a phenomenal
138% increase in online search traic of Specsavers
and hearing loss related words.
Enhancements
across our
supply chain
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Our customers
37
We celebrated many supply chain milestones, such as when our
Australian factory, Melbourne Glazing Services, processed its
60 millionth order in January to a customer at our Wonthaggi
store, Victoria.
We grew the surfacing capability at Szatmár Optikai in Hungary,
which glazes more than 3.3 million frames annually for our stores
throughout Europe. The investment in latest-technology lens
polishers means we can now surface more than 800,000 lenses
a month to support our Northern European business.
The introduction of a third MEI line at International Glazing
Services increased our UK glazing capacity by 58%.
Having become fully operational in 2023, Century Optic,
our newest prescription lenses lab and glazing facility in China,
has made a huge impact in oering the extra production needed
to meet increasing demands. The site now supplies two million
surfaced lenses a year to customers in Australia and New
Zealand. Since opening, ongoing investments in surfacing lines
including faster and more accurate lens polishing machines has
increased overall capacity by 225% and anti-reflective
coatings volume has grown by 185%.
As part of the continual improvement to our global logistics
infrastructure, we relocated our Hong Kong warehouse
to a more modern facility with additional space. This not only
enables more choice and flexibility for frame ranges in our ANZ
region, but also gives us options to further optimise across
our total product portfolio.
Above left: State-of-the-art lens polishers at Szatmar Optikai in Hungary.
Above right: Century Optic, our joint-venture manufacturing site in Zhuhai, China.
We are equally focused on how we can support the people
we work with and the communities we serve in a more
sustainable way.
At its core, our sustainability strategy is focused on enabling
long-term growth while mitigating our environmental impact,
leveraging existing and new partnerships, innovation,
and maximising our social contribution.
Sustainably making
a dierence
38
We recognise that our
sustainability responsibilities go
beyond our impact on the planet.
Our annual review 2023 - 2024
Supporting our
local communities
Our position
Our goals are ambitious, but so are we. Strong targets are
in place to ensure we can continue to change lives through our
expertise and in line with our sustainability strategy, both now
and in the future.
To help us achieve our long-term global plans, we have
dedicated teams consisting of subject matter experts and
heads of sustainability in each region and across our supply
chain. Our governance and reporting procedures enshrine
sustainable outcomes in many aspects of our strategy, tactics
and decisions, ensuring we are environmentally and socially
responsible in our activity while supporting us to meet
the growing legislative landscape.
At the same time as directly supporting our commitments,
we recognise the key role we play in generating tax revenues
in each country in which we operate. In the fiscal year ending
29 February 2024, Specsavers globally, its businesses
and its partners paid £343m in various taxes directly attributable
to them. In total, £905m of taxes were generated and collected
for the governments of the countries in which those businesses
operated. Full details of our tax strategy are available
on our website.
We believe healthcare is a basic human right, not a privilege.
That’s why we’ve always strived to make quality, aordable
eyecare and hearing care accessible to everyone. To support
those who may face barriers to access, we’re proud to
collaborate with local, national and international organisations
and charities.
Creating employment opportunities is another key aspect
of community development and we’re proud to provide
employment for almost 37,000 people through our store
network and a further 6,600+ people through our support
oices and manufacturing and distribution sites around the
world. We’re committed to maintaining a safe and inclusive
work environment, respecting and enhancing human rights,
and providing regular training and development opportunities
to empower our people to be their best.
39
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Sustainably making a dierence
We will continue to:
Support with our skills: Use our clinical expertise within
optometry and audiology to support people who face barriers
to accessing care.
Support with our resources: Leverage our business scale
and partner network to provide financial and non-financial
support to social causes and communities impacted
by adversity.
Partner for collective impact: Collaborate and form
partnerships with other organisations to accelerate and enhance
our impact, meaning we can support people beyond our
usual reach.
Support and invest in community development and resilience:
By creating opportunities, fairly and transparently, as well
as ensuring we are a fair-trading partner.
Measure our social contribution: Evaluate and report on how
we are maximising support to our communities.
Over the past year, across all our markets we were involved
in a vast number of activities in support of local, regional and
national causes across all our markets. Here are some highlights:
The UK and the Republic of Ireland
Our stores and support teams gave more than £1.5 million
to charities and good causes. Alongside our longstanding
support for Glaucoma UK, Blind Veterans UK, the British Citizen
Awards, Guide Dogs for the Blind Association and Hearing Dogs
for Deaf People, we supported numerous local charities,
from food banks to hospices and cancer charities to youth
sports activities.
Our progress
Our plans
Sustainability is about ensuring long-term growth
through the right choices for our people, planet and
communities. We’re committed to taking responsibility
for the impact our business has on the planet by
improving how we run our business day to day.
Tracy Pellett
Group Sustainability and Business Transformation Director
40
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Sustainably making a dierence
41
Our stores in the Republic of Ireland raised a further €135,000
for The Hope Foundation to help deliver eyecare clinics
in Kolkata, India.
Our support for people experiencing homelessness in the UK
and Ireland has gone from strength to strength as we build
on our partnerships with Vision Care for Homeless People
(VCHP), The Big Issue, Simon Community NI, Focus Ireland
and Crisis, among others, to:
Set up a homelessness lived experience group to ensure all our
support, from in-store journeys to petitioning government for
policy change, is conducted with our customers at the forefront.
Explore new store models for delivering out-of-hours care.
This resulted in 44 stores participating in a pilot and supporting
VCHP to open new clinics in four locations as part of our
ambition to help them grow from seven to 24 within five years.
We also doubled eye clinics and oered ear health clinics for the
first time during the Crisis at Christmas campaign.
Create resources for colleagues and partners including a
learning module for our store colleagues to better understand
homelessness and how they can support, with an initial
completion rate of 65% across our store network. A new CPD
course for industry professionals to understand more about
homelessness was also developed which was then over-
subscribed at 100% Optical, the UK’s largest optical event.
Produce our Access To Care report that highlighted the barriers
some people face in getting the care they need. We also
attended the Labour and Conservative party conferences
in the UK for the first time, where we spoke directly and
in-depth to more than 100 ministers, peers and commissioners.
Together with the wider sector, we lobbied government
to improve access to eye and hearing care for people who
face barriers to accessing care such as those experiencing
homelessness. This resulted in the National Eye Health Strategy
Bill for England receiving its first reading in Parliament.
Helping people access vital eye care
through our community project with
Faktum in Sweden (left) and our
partnership with The Big Issue in the
UK (right).
Northern Europe
In Denmark, together with Dansk Folkehjælp (Danish People’s
Aid), we provided 1,200 vulnerable people with new glasses
through our community project, SynsHjælpen.
In Finland, we continued our partnership with the Finnish
Federation of the Visually Impaired. In addition to our financial
support to provide services to those experiencing blindness
or partial sightedness, we raised awareness of the importance
of regular eye tests.
In Sweden, we collaborated with Faktum, Sweden’s largest
street newspaper, to develop an eye health trust from which
people living in social and economic distress can seek free
eyecare and products.
In the Netherlands, we donated €25,000 and developed
a discount voucher for youth education fund
Jeugdeducatiefonds, for the provision of glasses
to school-aged children. We also continued to support
The Salvation Army, donating more than €180,000.
In Norway, we continued to support the Give Sight
in Tanzania project as volunteers from our stores travelled
to Zanzibar where they conducted more than 1,100 sight
tests and dispensed 3,000 pairs of prescription glasses and
sunglasses. Locally, we partnered with MOT Norge in support
of their preventative programmes designed to develop resilience
in young people.
Australia and New Zealand
Through our donation of A$1.6 million to The Fred Hollows
Foundation’s Indigenous Australia Program, we assisted the
foundation and its programme partners to conduct more than
13,500 eye tests, provide 2,183 pairs of glasses and support
almost 3,000 eye surgeries, screenings and treatments for
cataracts and diabetic retinopathy. Our funding also helped
train 159 community health workers, deliver eye health
education sessions to almost 600 school children, and establish
an integrated optometry clinic within an Aboriginal medical
service in rural Western Australia.
We donated NZ$164,925 to The Fred Hollows Foundation New
Zealand as part of our ongoing support of the Mobile Eye Clinic
and Pacific Eye Institute in Fiji. This helped the foundation
to deliver 31,545 eye health consultations, perform 2,538
sight-saving operations and treatments, and dispense 3,337
pairs of glasses.
42
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Sustainably making a dierence
We partnered with Vision 2020, Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre,
Geraldton Regional Aboriginal Medical Service and Southwest
Aboriginal Medical Service to provide eye tests and funded
eyewear for around 400 referred Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander patients as part of an Indigenous Eyecare
pilot programme.
Through our Kids Go Free programme in New Zealand,
our store teams conducted more than 64,200 free eye tests
to children under 16, helping parents to keep track of eye health
and take any preventative measures.
More than 500 of our store and support oice colleagues
participated in volunteering and charitable activities, raising
a total of A$179,828 for various local organisations, which was
then matched by Specsavers.
Our community support includes
international projects such as
Give Sight in Tanzania (top left),
our Kids Go Free initiative in New
Zealand (top right) and outreach
programmes with The Fred Hollows
Foundation (bottom).
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Sustainably making a dierence
Canada
In collaboration with The Eyeglasses Project, which helps
provide eyecare services for refugees, we supported a pop-up
clinic in Vancouver performing sight tests and donating glasses
at no cost to families from the Pacific Immigrant Resources Society.
We announced our gold sponsorship of the Canadian Council
of the Blind to support their work in advocating better quality
of life for people living with vision loss.
Supply chain
We partnered with Siriraj Hospital to conduct lazy-eye
screenings and sight tests in 16 elementary schools within the
Bangkok Noi district. Between 30-50 children per school were
found to be experiencing vision problems and we were able
to help them through the provision of prescription glasses.
We worked with the Red Cross in the Bang Bua Thong district
of Thailand to provide eyecare for around 300 members
of the community who were living in poverty.
Our global supply chain teams and manufacturing
and distribution sites volunteered 2,200 hours to support
community initiatives and raised more than £11,700
for local charities.
We’re committed to taking responsibility for the impact
our business has on the planet by improving our processes
and activities. Guided by our values and responsibilities
to our people and our customers, we’ve taken steps to try
and reduce our environmental impact by increasing our
renewable energy procurement across the regions in which
we operate, validating our science-based targets, and reducing
the amount of packaging across our business.
Protecting our planet
44
Our position
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Sustainably making a dierence
45
Our plans
Reduce the
volume of packaging
we use by
30%
Increase the
recycled content
of our packaging to
30%
Ensure
100%
of our packaging
is recyclable
Sustainably source
100%
of our paper
and cardboard
Our global activity consists of clear ambitions across five areas:
1. Carbon
Our target is to reach net zero carbon emissions across
our business by 2050. We plan to initially achieve a 50%
reduction in scope 1 and 2 (direct and indirect greenhouse gas)
emissions and a 25% reduction in scope 3 (emissions created
by suppliers and organisations we work with) by 2030.
We will systematically reduce emissions by increasing our
renewable energy procurement and reducing the carbon
footprint of our stores, support oices and supply chain sites.
2. Products and materials
Our ambition is to be the market leader for sustainable optical
and audiology products and services. Through clear objectives,
we will ensure 33% of our frames are made with bio-based
or recycled materials by the end of February 2025, putting
us on a trajectory to reach 100% of frames globally by 2030.
As part of this, we’ll seek solutions for handling products at their
end of life and support communities aected by plastic pollution.
This involves reducing the amount of unsustainable material used
in our products, while maintaining their integrity and quality.
To us, unsustainable means any material made from a virgin,
non-renewable resource, that does not biodegrade or cannot
be easily recycled in existing industrial systems.
3. Packaging
Packaging plays an important role in protecting our products
from damage, ensuring they are transported safely to our stores
and customers. However, our goal is to remove all unnecessary
packaging, redesign packaging for circularity, and only procure
materials from sustainable sources.
By 2030 we will:
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Sustainably making a dierence
46
4. Water
We depend on water for processes across our supply chain and for
our own operations. We intend to further reduce our water usage by
implementing additional initiatives and investigating improved ways
to collect data on our water footprint.
5. Resource management
We believe that once our products and packaging have served their
purpose, they should be recycled and reused ensuring our materials
never become waste.
We have three key priorities in this area:
Reduce the volume
of materials used in our
products, packaging
and goods not for resale
across all
our operations.
Achieve zero waste
to landfill by 2030.
To achieve this, all waste we
produce must be recycled
or reused through existing
disposal or recycling
infrastructure.
Design for circularity.
To avoid our product and
packaging materials becoming
waste we need to design
for recyclability and reuse.
We have committed that all
our packaging will be 100%
recyclable by 2030.
Waste segregation at Vision labs in the UK.
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Sustainably making a dierence
47
60%
of our global energy
consumption is now from
certified renewable
energy sources.
Our progress
Here’s a summary of our 2023/24 activity:
Carbon
We received oicial validation with the Science Based Targets
initiative (SBTi), joining companies worldwide in following the
agreed scientific methodology to reduce carbon.
We further reduced our greenhouse gas emissions by investing
in a series of solar PV systems across our manufacturing
and sites, cumulating to more than 900 MWh renewable
energy generated per year.
We procured an internal global carbon reporting platform
to enable accurate, eicient and timely reporting across our
emissions. This will help us identify hotspots and prioritise
our eorts to reduce carbon use in these areas.
Our UK manufacturing and distribution sites successfully
completed several trials which included reducing the curing
times of coating ovens and developing an unheated method
of lens washing. Together, these changes will reduce usage
by 167MWh of electricity per year – a 2% reduction
of the annual consumption.
Products and materials
We developed an internal standard of 28 materials that are
considered more sustainable and approved for frame use
across our ReWear and LUXe ranges, a huge increase
from just two such materials in 2021.
We’re delighted to have our carbon targets
validated by the Science-Based Targets
initiative (SBTi). It solidifies what we are
doing and ensures we take meaningful steps
to reduce our carbon emissions.
Claire McMahon
Head of Environmental Delivery
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Sustainably making a dierence
48
Working with Hilco Vision, we relaunched our global
accessories range (cleaning solutions, lens wipes and glasses
cords), which are now made with more sustainable materials.
Our glasses cases contain 88% (soft cases) and 66% (hard cases)
GRS-certified post-consumer waste recycled polyester,
while our lens cloths contain 100% GRS-certified
post-consumer waste recycled polyester.
In areas of our business where clinical requirements dictate
how products are made, contact lenses for example, we
embarked on a new partnership to oset the plastic use
required to meet our customers’ health needs.
One collaboration is with Plastic Bank, a social enterprise
that works with communities to remove plastic from coastal
areas. For every box of contact lenses sold in store or online
globally, we fund the collection and recycling of plastic waste
that is equal to the weight of the plastic used in our
soft contact lenses and packaging.
Packaging
We reduced our packaging waste by 51 tonnes, through
the consolidation of our frame distribution packaging.
Rationalising the supply base and pack sizes, resulted
in an increased capacity per shipment and therefore fewer
consignments to stores.
Our polybags and sleeves are now made from 100%
recycled material.
We introduced a packaging guide for both internal operations
and suppliers to clearly define our path to using 100%
recyclable materials.
As part of our commitment to using materials from accredited,
sustainably managed sources in our packaging, we became
Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified for our contact
lens customer distribution packaging.
Water
We reduced our annual water usage by 10% across our
global manufacturing and distribution sites by improving the
ophthalmic lens washing processes.
Resource management
We replaced the use of plastic bubble envelopes with
100% recyclable paper, saving 22 tonnes of plastic going
to landfill each year.
200,000
post-consumer plastic bottles
(the equivalent of) have been
used in our ReWear frames
since the launch of this
nature-inspired range,
helping to preserve valuable
resources and reduce the
impact of our products
on the environment.
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Sustainably making a dierence
49
In Northern Europe, we started to introduce schemes that
recycle old or broken frames into new products for use across
many industries.
We opted for thinner, semi-finished plastic lens pucks that
we order from suppliers. Reducing the thickness of material
required in this way equates to saving 20 tonnes
of plastic per year.
We continued our end-of-product-life recycling programmes
across all regions, enabling customers to donate their pre-loved
ophthalmic frames and prescription sunglasses for charitable
and environmental causes. In Australia, we partner with Lions
Recycle for Sight to refurbish and distribute unwanted frames
in good condition to communities in need and specialist plastics
recycler, MyGroup, collect used glasses and dummy lenses
from our UK stores to be reused and made into new products.
Left: Dummy lenses collected and recycled
at International Glazing Services.
Right: Thinner lens pucks increase our
plastic savings.
50
Sourcing responsibly is integral to the way we operate.
We have strong, long-term relationships with our suppliers,
meaning we can work together to achieve our purpose
of changing lives through better sight and hearing – for those
in our supply chain as well as our customers.
Our customers not only expect us to care for them, but also
that people within our supply chain are treated with dignity
and respect, so understanding where our products are sourced
and made, and the risks as well as the opportunities across
our operations, is an essential part of our due diligence.
This includes the products and services we sell, the technology
and equipment we use as well as the ways in which they
reach our stores and support oices.
We set clear expectations of our suppliers and last year,
we introduced a new Supplier Code of Conduct defining our
requirements. Based on the Ethical Trading Initiative Base Code
and International Labour Organisations Conventions, it covers
respectful employment standards, safe working environments,
and ethical business practices.
We perform regular audits to ensure that neither bribery
and corruption nor slavery or human traicking exists in our
supply chain. Full details of our Modern Slavery Statement
can be found on our websites.
We’re committed to being ethical and sustainable
across our business, and making a positive dierence by:
Ensuring a robust approach to human rights and ethical risks.
Working with independent auditors, as well as the introduction
of our new systems, enables us to conduct risk assessments
and proactively rectify any non-compliance of our policies
which are aligned with the Ethical Trade Initiative and the
International Labour Organisation.
Regularly engaging with our key suppliers to ensure they are
updated on our plans and understand our requirements.
We aim to bring our key suppliers together during 2024 to share
learnings and tackle joint challenges on sustainability together.
Sourcing responsibly
Our position
Our plans
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Sustainably making a dierence
51
Rolling out our ethical data platform that allows us to clearly
view where our human rights and ethical risks lie, meaning
we can include more suppliers in our audits.
Continuing to embed our Supplier Code of Conduct which sets
out the behaviours and standards that suppliers must always
demonstrate when working with us.
In 2023/24:
We became registered members of SEDEX, as part of our
commitment to ensuring good working conditions within
our supply chain. The ethical and environmental data platform
will allow us to report more transparently on our suppliers’
performance, identify risks more accurately and therefore
focus our eorts accordingly.
Following the launch of our new Supplier Code of Conduct,
we engaged with, and received commitment from, our top
75 suppliers across goods for resale (GFR) and goods not for
resale (GNFR). These suppliers account for 65% of our spend
on products and services.
To ensure compliance with this new code, we continued
regular ethical and environmental audits. Third-party
auditors independently assess accordance with regulatory
requirements as well as our social and environmental standards.
Where non-compliances are found we work closely with
suppliers to resolve and improve standards.
We updated our contracts to include sustainability-related
clauses, in readiness for engagement with our suppliers.
Our progress
Looking
forward
Doug and Mary opened this review with a reminder of the
driving passion that gave birth to Specsavers 40 years ago:
a crusade to change lives through better sight and hearing that
has remained constant ever since. But this hasn’t been a solo
eort. It’s a cause shared by tens of thousands of Specsavers
partners and colleagues around the globe.
In closing, therefore it seems fitting to reflect on what has
actually enabled us to deliver our purpose over four decades:
our people.
This report is, naturally, brimming with statistics and these
numbers certainly provide colour to the success we’ve achieved
in the last 12 months. But Specsavers is much more than
facts and figures.
Quite simply, nothing could be achieved without the passion
and commitment of our teams. Each day, across 2,700+
businesses, 5,000 partners inspire 45,000 store and support
colleagues to change lives for millions of customers.
I love our impactful marketing, the great value of our products,
the profound expertise of our services and our modern, enticing
store environments – but it’s the power of our people that truly,
demonstrably, makes things better in our communities.
It’s this that galvanises me every single day.
Our teams have always been important to us. But the last few
years have seen us unleash incredible energy on our people
agenda, as we create a place where everyone is proud to belong
and inspired to be at their very best.
As we chart our course towards this ambitious goal, we’re
supported through our partnership with Great Place to Work®,
a global authority on workplace culture who shares our passion
for people and helps assess our progress.
This year, we celebrated every market being certified as
a Great Place to Work, with Norway, Australia and Sweden all
achieving top 10 status. However, special mention must go
to our teams in Denmark and Finland, both recognised as the
Best Workplace
TM
in their respective country.
Our annual review 2023 - 2024
53
Such awards are nice to receive of course, but the true driver
here is not about the Specsavers trophy cabinet, it’s about how
it helps us in making a dierence. We see this every day through:
The unstinting commitment of colleagues in our optics
and audiology practices, on the road in domiciliary
or in Newmedica surgery facilities
The outstanding leadership of our partners, who nurture
their teams to provide fantastic customer care
Our global supply chain and support teams, tirelessly going
above and beyond in all they do.
Throughout the year, I’m completely awestruck by examples
that bring these to life – just some of which are included in the
preceding pages –whether it’s the careers we’re supporting,
the accessibility to care we’re enabling or the sustainable
improvements we’re making: we’re ultimately changing lives,
every single day.
As we look forward to the next 40 years, this report gives me
one more chance to thank everyone who makes the Specsavers
magic happen. Simply put, our business wouldn’t exist without
your commitment, belief and passion.
I remember where I was on 14 February 1984 – the day that
Specsavers first opened its doors - like it was yesterday (I was
very young!). But I’ve never felt prouder than I am today about
the incredible work of our teams.
Thank you, for everything.
John Perkins
Group CEO and Chief Sustainability Oicer
54
Specsavers
Executive
Board
A qualified and registered optometrist for more than 50 years,
Mary is involved in many areas of the business including driving
customer service standards, championing our values,
and shaping our corporate responsibility commitments.
Mary also plays an active role with a number of national
and local charities and was made a Dame Commander
of the Order of the British Empire in 2007. She was
appointed ambassador for Vision Aid Overseas in 2009.
Dame Mary Perkins
Founder
In addition to his role as Founder and Chairman of the group,
Doug has been a qualified and registered optometrist for
more than 50 years. As such, Doug maintains specific
responsibilities for the advancement of professional standards
and supporting the regulatory agenda across our markets.
He and his wife, Mary, established Specsavers’ joint venture
partnership model in 1984, with the vision of making
eyecare aordable to all.
Doug Perkins
Chairman and Founder
Our annual review 2023 - 2024
55
Nigel joined Specsavers from ophthalmic lens manufacturer,
Essilor in 1997. In 2006, he joined the Board to provide overall
leadership to Australia, New Zealand and Northern Europe.
He went on to spearhead our expansion into Canada, driving our
innovation agenda and developing the group’s growth strategy.
In his role as COO, Nigel maintains overall responsibility for
our four trading regions, (UK, ROI and Spain; Northern Europe;
Australia and New Zealand; and North America) ensuring
collaboration across our business.
Nigel Parker
Chief Operating Oicer
John is responsible for the overall success of the partnership
and the strategic direction of the group. John joined Specsavers
in 1998 and worked in stores and operations, as well as the
international team, before joining the board in 2003.
A qualified chartered accountant with an MBA in retailing,
John spent five years with Deloitte before joining Specsavers.
John Perkins
Chief Executive Oicer
and Chief Sustainability Oicer
Paul joined Specsavers in 2009, becoming Managing Director
for Australia and New Zealand in 2014. Returning to the UK
in 2017 for his current role, he now has accountability for
our group finance, tax and treasury, legal, supply chain,
commercial and technology functions.
A former Finance Director at Boots UK, Paul also held Divisional
Finance Director and Managing Director (Manufacturing) roles
there, with operations across Europe and the Far East.
Paul Fussey
Chief Financial
and Commercial Oicer
Pauline Best
Chief People Oicer
Pauline first joined Specsavers (from Vodafone) in 2008.
During her 10 years in the business, she led the delivery of our
people strategy, as well as establishing the core foundations
of our people structure and processes.
From 2018, Pauline spent four years working across
dierent businesses including serving on the Board of Vertu
and as an executive coach and HR consultant. Pauline returned
to Specsavers in 2022 with global responsibility for
our people agenda.
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Specsavers Executive Board
56
Simon joined Specsavers in 2002 as part of our international
team. Since then, he’s held many marketing and commercial
roles, including stints in both Australia, as Marketing Director,
and Northern Europe as Trading Director.
In 2019, Simon took up the role of Group Strategy Director,
responsible for the innovation and growth activities
that support our long-term success. He joined the Specsavers
Executive Board in 2022.
Simon Hawkins
Group Strategy Director
Carina began her career at Specsavers as an optical assistant
in 2000. She held a variety of roles in store, within our training
function, and as part of our retail support team, before moving
into audiology in 2016.
In 2022, Carina joined the Specsavers Executive Board
as Managing Director for Audiology in the UK and ROI.
Carina Hummel
Managing Director
UK / ROI Audiology
Peter joined Specsavers in 2016 as Retail Director,
before becoming Managing Director for Optics across the UK,
ROI, and Spain as part of the Specsavers Executive Board
in 2022.
As a qualified pharmacist, Peter led the pharmacy
and beauty businesses as Trading Director for Boots prior
to joining Specsavers.
Peter Bainbridge
Managing Director
UK / ROI / Spain
Peter Wright
Chief Marketing Oicer
Peter is responsible for the protection, representation,
and development of our brand, supporting business growth
while ensuring that customer experience continues to improve
in an omni-channel world.
Peter joined Specsavers in 2021, following 10 years at IKEA
(INGKA) where he most recently held the role of Chief Marketing
Oicer with responsibility for marketing across 30 countries.
Prior to this, he also held Marketing Director roles
at Thorntons and Tesco.
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Specsavers Executive Board
57
Paul joined the Specsavers Executive Board in 2017 as Group
Commercial Director, before moving to Melbourne in 2019
in the role of Managing Director – ANZ.
Joining Specsavers in 2005 as a commercial manager,
Paul went on to establish our Hong Kong oice, before working
on our entry into the ANZ market. As Commercial Director
in ANZ, Paul led the region’s core functions, from technology
to optometry. A chartered accountant, Paul has also worked
for Andersen and Deloitte.
Paul Bott
Managing Director
Australia and New Zealand (ANZ)
Richard joined Specsavers in 2004, as a regional development
manager, and held many roles within our retail support teams.
In 2008, he became Director of Retail Advancement for Australia
and New Zealand, returning to the UK business in 2010.
Three years later, Richard took on the role of Director
of Retail for our Northern Europe region. In 2022, he became
Managing Director - Northern Europe and joined
the Specsavers Executive Board.
Richard Owens
Managing Director
Northern Europe
Rebecca joined Specsavers in 2018 with responsibility for
strategy and change in the UK and ROI. Rebecca has been
Managing Director for our ophthalmology business Newmedica
since 2021 and joined the Specsavers Executive Board in 2022.
Prior to joining Specsavers, Rebecca spent 10 years at Asda
in several leadership roles including Chief Compliance Oicer.
Her earlier career was at KPMG in mergers and acquisitions.
Rebecca Lythe
Managing Director
Newmedica
Bill Moir
Managing Director
North America
Bill joined Specsavers Australia in 2017 as Trading Director
before becoming Group Digital and eCommerce Director in 2020.
He moved to Canada as Managing Director - North America
in 2021 and joined the Specsavers Executive Board in 2022.
Before joining Specsavers, Bill worked with Coles Group
in Australia, having previously held various board-level roles
in retail organisations across the UK and Europe.
Our annual review 2023 - 2024 | Specsavers Executive Board
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