High street chemist Boots to cut 700 head office jobs to make it “fit for the future”

High street chemist Boots will cut as many as 700 non-store roles as part of a major restructure to turn the business around. 

 

Around half of the job cuts will take place at the retailer's Nottingham head office, while the rest will be among its field teams across the UK, industry bible Retail Week (£) is reporting.

 

Staff are being informed today, and the company will entere a period of consultancy. As well as redundancy, it is hoping to redeploy and retrain some of its staff to focus on “key areas to drive future growth”, a company statement explained. 

 

The move is designed to make Boots, which was bought by US retailer Walgreens last year, “fit for the future”. 

 

Boots currently employs a total of 60,000 people in the UK, of which around 8,000 are based at its Nottingham head office.  

 

Speaking to Retail Week today, Boots’ president Simon Roberts said the restructure was in order to “simplify” the retailer’s support operations. “We can’t afford to have a company that’s too expensive to run,” he said.

 

However Roberts maintained there were no plans to close stores and no store-based staff would be affected. He refused to be drawn on whether there would be any further rounds of job cuts.

 

Roberts added that the cuts were not related to the merger with Walgreens.