Iceland creates 3,000 new jobs to deal with ecommerce surge

Iceland said the pandemic had driven “particularly strong growth in online orders” during the first half of the year and highlighted that the 3,000 new staff would be made up of new delivery drivers as well as in-store staff to help with picking orders. 

The move comes after the grocer revealed that online orders had increased four-fold since March and in response, Iceland had boosted its capacity by more than 300% to 750,000 delivery slots a week. 

The retailer has also launched a partnership with Uber Eats to enable grocery delivery to London customers. If successful, the frozen food specialist said it would be rolled out nationally. 

Iceland is looking to expand its delivery fleet by 30%, while the UberEats partnership will allow delivery to customers within 20 mins of ordering from its Hackney warehouse.

Iceland chief customer officer David Devany said: “We’ve been blown away by the demand for deliveries over the past six months with a four-fold increase in online orders since the beginning of lockdown. We see no sign of a slowdown in the demand for deliveries in the run-up to Christmas, so a recruitment drive for more permanent staff was essential.

“Our store and delivery colleagues have gone above and beyond during lockdown introducing incredible measures to help their local communities and I’m proud that our business has been able to adapt to the changing needs of our customer.”