Tesco has reported on how it will continue its turnaround plan, since it was launched four years ago. Overall, the chain estimates that up to 9,000 roles could be impacted, however, its expectation is that up to half of these colleagues could be redeployed to other customer-facing roles.
Tesco stated, 'Whilst this turnaround continues, it does so in a competitive and challenging market. Today we’ve briefed our colleagues on some changes we’re making to our stores and offices to further simplify our business, so that we can continue to invest in serving our customers. We continually review our business on this basis and communicate changes to our colleagues first.'
Jason Tarry, CEO, UK & ROI, said, “In our four years of turnaround we’ve made good progress, but the market is challenging and we need to continually adapt to remain competitive and respond to how customers want to shop.
'We’re making changes to our UK stores and head office to simplify what we do and how we do it, so we’re better able to meet the needs of our customers. This will impact some of our colleagues and our commitment is to minimise this as much as possible and support our colleagues throughout.”
The changes include the following:
Colleague rooms
Currently only one third of the stores provide a hot food service and, over recent years, there has been reduced demand for this. Over the last three years, it has been rolling out new self-service colleague kitchen areas in a number of stores, and is now extending this to all remaining stores with a hot food service. This change will impact the people working in colleague rooms, who are employed by third party caterers.
Counters simplification
Over recent years, its convenience and online businesses have continued to grow, as have the core grocery and fresh departments in large stores. Not only are customers shopping in different ways, but they have less time available to shop too – which means they are using the counters less frequently.
The group will be making changes to the counters in large stores to ensure that it has the right offer for customers. It expects that around 90 stores will close their counters, with the remaining 700 trading with either a full or flexible counter offer.
Stock control simplification
Tesco is also changing the way it manages stock. After a number of trials, it found a simpler way to conduct store routines and will be rolling this out to all stores. These changes mean a significantly reduced workload, with fewer hours needed to complete the routines.
Merchandising simplification
The chain wants to make shopping even easier, and knows when it moves products around this can prove frustrating for customers. Tesco staff have said they want to spend more time with customers, rather than moving products around the store. So the business has been working to reduce the amount of layout changes made, so it’s easier for customers, and less work for colleagues, meaning fewer merchandising hours are needed.
Head office
Tesco has completed a detailed review and this week is talking to employees about changes in some of the head office teams, moving to a simpler and leaner structure, which will allow the company to focus on supporting customers.