Department store group John Lewis and sister business Waitrose have proposed 1,000 redundancies in stores, Retail Week can reveal.
Parent John Lewis Partnership informed partners of the plan on Wednesday morning (July 14), and said that the changes would make the business more competitive and enable it to better serve shoppers.
The restructuring is designed to simplify management structures by removing layers, and allow reinvestment in customer experience, such as service and visual merchandising.
John Lewis and Waitrose are the latest retailers to cut some store roles. Tesco and Sainsbury’s are among those also to have done so.
The Partnership is in the midst of a transformation programme as it seeks to turn around the eponymous department store business and benefit from synergies between it and Waitrose.
The numbers behind the redundancies
The plan includes reducing costs by £300m annually in order to fund investment. This year the retailer aims to invest £800m in improvements.
The redundancies average three people per store at the 331 Waitrose branches and 34 John Lewis stores. The Partnership hopes to keep compulsory redundancies at a minimum as voluntary options are offered, and it will seek to find alternative roles for those who want to stay.
The retailer told partners that it wants a simplified structure of three roles across both brands – branch manager, deputy branch manager and team manager. The types of roles to be made redundant would include those such as operations managers, assistant team managers and senior team managers.
A John Lewis Partnership spokesperson said: “We have announced to our Partners our intention to simplify our management structures in Waitrose and John Lewis stores, which will allow us to reinvest in what matters most to our customers.”
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