Morrisons to axe 1,500 store management roles

The supermarket giant is axing a host of middle-management jobs across its 491 stores, including the position of warehouse manager, which will be stripped out of all its shops.

Morrisons will instead create 1,700 more junior, customer-facing positions, including checkout staff and shelf stackers, as part of a drive to “serve customers better with more front-line colleagues”.

The Bradford-based grocer added that it currently has 800 management vacancies across its estate, which impacted staff will be given the opportunity to apply for.

Morrisons informed affected workers of the changes this morning.

Morrisons retail director Gary Mills said: “Our aim is to serve customers better with more front-line colleagues in stores improving product availability and helping customers at the checkouts.

“Very regrettably, there will be a period of uncertainty for some managers affected by these proposals and we’ll be supporting them through this important process. Our commitment is to redeploy as many affected colleagues as possible.”

Grocery restructures

The changes come as the UK’s leading grocery retailers step up plans to restructure their shopfloor operations.

As revealed by Retail Week, Tesco and Sainsbury’s both axed thousands of in-store roles last week as they face into rapidly changing shopping habits, the rise of online and a raft of cost headwinds, including the national living wage and the apprenticeship levy.

Britain’s biggest grocer is culling 1,700 roles in a bid to “simplify” its operations, making the people manager, compliance manager and customer experience manager positions redundant across its stores and fulfilment centres.

It will replace them with 900 new people partners, learning partners, colleague relations partners and colleague administrators.

Sainsbury’s is also in the midst of a drive to “reset” its store operations in a move that leaves “thousands” of its staff facing an uncertain future.

The grocer is axing the roles of deputy manager, department manager and team leader, replacing them with operations managers and a newly created customer and trading manager position.