Today (31st January) Tesco have announced changes to their business “to ensure we remain focused and competitive in a fast-changing market”, which will see 2,100 job losses across the business.
Tesco have confirmed to News OnTheWight that although they won’t comment on specific branches, the proposed management changes will affect all their larger Superstores and Extra stores.
The Isle of Wight has three Tesco Express branches; Ventnor, Wootton and Lake, as well as a superstore in Freshwater and an Extra branch in Ryde.
Management changes
Tesco outline the management changes planned for all superstores and Extra stores:
- Over the last couple of years, we have started rolling out a new management structure in approximately 350 of our smaller Superstores, which better reflects the needs of our stores.
- We have now taken the decision to extend this structure across all our larger Superstores and Extra stores.
- We will introduce approximately 1,800 new Shift Leader roles in these stores, leading on the day-to-day operational duties on the shop floor.
- We will also realign our manager roles to ensure they are all of equal size and complexity, focusing on overall store performance and supporting our colleagues to serve their customers, communities and planet a little better every day.
- With the introduction of these new Shift Leader roles and realignment of management roles, we have taken the difficult decision to reduce the number of Lead and Team Managers in our large stores, impacting around 1,750 colleagues.
- We are supporting colleagues impacted by these changes, who will have the option of moving into Shift Leader vacancies with financial support or taking redundancy.
Counter closures
- We first announced changes to our counters back in 2019, and we’ve been reviewing them on an ongoing basis ever since.
- We have seen a significant decrease in demand for our counters over the last few years, and our customers no longer say they are a significant reason for them to come in store and shop with us. Instead, they are choosing to buy from our wide range of great quality products available in our aisles.
- The majority of our stores no longer operate any counters. In the small number of stores that do still have them, many are only open with reduced days and times – and we have strengthened our in-aisle ranges to ensure that customers can still find the meat, fish and deli products they want.
- We have therefore decided to close our remaining counters and hot delis from 26 February, and the space will be repurposed to better reflect our customers’ needs. All affected colleagues will be offered alternatives roles in store.
- Where we can work with a third party to offer a counter experience in-store, we will continue to do so.
Other changes
Tesco say that in addition to the changes above, there are a small number of other localised changes across the business that they’re talking to colleagues about.
In stores, this includes the closure of eight pharmacies, where there are other pharmacies within one mile of the store, moving overnight roles to the daytime in 12 stores and reducing hours within some Post Offices.
They say,
“Our priority is to support colleagues impacted by these changes and we will enter a consultation process with USDAW on these proposals.
“We currently have around 2,000 vacancies across our business, in addition to the more than 1,800 new Shift Leader roles we will be introducing to stores.”
Tesco UK and ROI CEO, Jason Tarry said,
“These are difficult decisions to make, but they are necessary to ensure we remain focused on delivering value for our customers wherever we can, as well as ensuring our store offer reflects what our customers value the most.
“Our priority is to support those colleagues impacted and help find alternative roles within our business from the vacancies and newly created roles we have available.”
Article edit
3.07pm 31st Jan 2023 – Freshwater branch added
Image: talk2santosh under CC BY 2.0
