Tesco breaks silence over 'major overhaul' coming to UK supermarkets
Tesco has broken its silence over a major supermarket overhaul which could see 400 jobs axed. The UK's largest supermarket chain and Britain's biggest grocer has announced plans to axe 400 jobs across its stores and head office management as part of plans to “simplify” the business.
The job cuts would impact head office roles, some bakery positions and management roles in Tesco Mobile phone shops. Matthew Barnes, Tesco UK CEO said: “These are difficult decisions affecting our colleagues, but we believe they are necessary to enable us to invest in what matters most to our customers. Our priority is to support impacted colleagues, and we will do everything we can to help them find alternative roles within our business. Today, we have almost 1,000 vacancies available.”
It comes after rival Sainsbury's axed 3,000 roles, with chief executive Simon Roberts saying the supermarket is “facing into a particularly challenging cost environment”. Mr Roberts added: “The decisions we are announcing today are essential to ensure we continue to drive forward our momentum but have also meant some difficult choices impacting our dedicated colleagues in a number of parts of our business.
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"We’ll be doing everything we can to support anyone impacted by today’s announcements.” Morrisons is also set to cut over 200 jobs, including in customer experience, employee engagement, recruitment, and payroll. A spokesperson for the supermarket told The Grocer: “We have recently carried out a review of our People structure to ensure we are offering our stores and sites a timely and consistent service.
"We are therefore proposing to remove the roles of regional people manager, store people manager and case specialist from our structure, meaning colleagues in these roles are being placed at risk of redundancy. The new structure will consist of a number of new central roles to support our supermarkets directly along with central HR support and additional employee relations roles.
"Before any final decisions are taken, we will undertake a minimum 45-day consultation process.”