Supermarket Morrisons to cut 2,600 top jobs
MORRISONS confirmed yesterday that it would be cutting 2,600 jobs in its stores in the UK, as it sought to simplify its management structure.
The supermarket chain, which is currently ranked fourth by market share in the UK, said it has trialled the new management structure in some of its stores and it now aims to reduce the number of top-level staff it employs to reduce levels of hierarchy.
Some stores had as many as seven tiers between the shop floor and store manager, it said yesterday.
Dalton Philips, Morrisons chief executive, said: “This is the right time to modernise the way our stores are managed.
“These changes will improve our focus on customers and lead to simpler, smarter ways of working.”
However, Jonathan De Mello, retail analyst at Harper Dennis Hobbs, told City A.M. yesterday that he believed the aim of the cuts to management jobs at Morrisons might be to slash costs, as it sought to avoid being “left behind” in an increasingly competitive UK market.
Earlier this year Morrisons announced a set of troubling results, including an £176m loss for the year to February, and a 7.1 per cent drop in quarterly sales to May.
Morrisons shares rose yesterday by 2.28 per cent to finish on 192.6p.