John Lewis is planning to increase the amount of staff working on its shop floor as it unveils a multi-million pound investment into store technology.
The department store told staff today (13 August) that it was making changes to their roles and realigning its staffing needs to “best meet customer demand”, however, this will result in a proposed 153 fewer roles – approximately 1% of its workforce.
The retailer hopes this will be met through natural attrition and a voluntary redundancy process.
Changes include bringing its front and back of house roles together as one, instead of two seperate jobs as they are currently, in a move it claims will enable greater flexibility and allow more store staff to support on the shopfloor during busy periods.
To facilitate the changes John Lewis will invest £5m into new digital headsets to help cut wait times and remove the need for staff to have to track each other down in the branch.
Customers will be able to call for assistance by using call points installed at key areas around its stores such as fitting rooms and customer collection points.
A John Lewis spokesperson told Retail Gazette: “We’re seeking to make sure partners are in the right place at the right time to help customers.
“We’re also removing unnecessary tasks, and introducing new technology to make their roles easier.”
It is thought that new John Lewis boss Peter Ruis wants to adopt a more “Selfridges-style” approach to customer service.
The Sunday Times reported last month that Ruis believes that staffing levels has been cut too much on the shop floor and is seeking to bring the sales culture of John Lewis’ beauty halls to other departments.
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As part of the new suite of changes, John Lewis will spend £1m on over 600 new mobile printers, allowing store employees to easily replace missing shelf-edge labels.
The retailer revealed it would also introduce mobile payment to its 5,000 partner devices allowing staff to serve customers on the shop floor rather than having to direct them to the nearest till, which it said will speed up transactions, reduce queues and increase sales and conversion.
John Lewis said it piloted the initative in its Horsham, White City, Brent Cross and Cheltenham branches and reported a 4% increase in customer satisfaction scores when the alternative payment was used.
The proposed changes follow a similar programme that was introduced in Waitrose last year, which has resulted in more than 17,400 extra partner-hours on Saturday and Sunday when its stores are busiest.
The retailer said Waitrose’s product availability is also at a record high following a range of investments, including the introduction of additional shelving in shops to make the task of replenishment easier and speedier.
The spokesperson told Retail Gazette that Waitrose had been ranked the number one supermarket for customer satisfaction since the changes had been made.
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