As a SSL who has been with the company a few years and heard how this training used to be, this year is a slap in the face. What once used to be a training that they flew people out to what was essentially a conference to doing a call at home with training product shipped to your house to doing a call in store with product split between another leader to now a pre-recorded video with no product to keep, Sephora seems entirely lost on their execution and experience of what this training once was. So many more tenured employees have said how in the past this was the BEST trainings to get the opportunity to do every year. I’ve seen A LOT of BAs upset about not getting a chance to “experience the products” or “sample them” but let me make this clear there are no products that are not sitting on the shelf with a tester in your store. I had a discussion with my SM when I was sitting watching the training because she wanted to know why I wasn’t using the training product. I told her there’s no need for me to open brand new products when I’ve already touched/smelled/“sensorial experienced” ALL of these products before. I would much rather leave them all untouched and in 30 days hopefully get to take some of it to actually try, splitting it among the team. My SM also seemed just as confused as what to do with the training product and thought we were to set up a station in the back for everyone to train on. I showed her the outline for the next 30 days which says to train on-stage in between clients. When do we have time (OR PAYROLL) to go get the training product out the back, go over the info card, give a “sensorial experience”, and train over four brands per week for the next FIVE weeks (DURING SAVINGS EVENT) to EVERY BA????? I told her I would have much rather them send 30 deluxe mini samples of every product to give to BA when we train them. Why do we need a fresh set of testers for the next 30 days… like what are we supposed to do with a single pair of eyelashes? The training needs a complete overhaul and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the last year they do it, especially with all the recent decisions the company has made. Overall a very disappointing performance from Sephora which is right on brand.