Morrisons share price falls as new boss David Potts cuts jobs at head office to hire 5,000 shop floor staff
Morrisons is cutting hundreds of roles in its head office while simultaneously going on a hiring spree for its shop floor.
The troubled supermarket, which last month revealed full year losses of £176m and brought in a new chief executive after Dalton Phillips left under a cloud, is expecting to make 720 head office roles redundant.
New chief executive David Potts is taking the scythe to the top jobs, noting that the number of management-level staff has increased by 50 per cent since 2008.
It is consulting on the job losses for the next 45 days. Voluntary redundancy is on offer.
At the same time – and presumably funded, at least in part, by this downsizing – the supermarket is hiring 5,000 new shop floor staff “to further improve service, increase availability, and open more checkouts”.
Staff members whose role is being made redundant will be offered a role in a Morrisons store and some will be redeployed in other parts of the business.
Potts said: “We are focusing on the things that matter to our customers. That means having more of our staff in our stores, improving product availability and helping customers at our checkouts. We believe our customers and our staff will appreciate the improvements.
“To support this, we need a simpler, faster and cost-conscious head office and that requires some tough but necessary decisions.”
Morrisons' share price dropped on the news, and was down 1.4 per cent at pixel time.