Yesterday Morrisons announced that up to 2,600 department managers and supervisors were facing redundancy as part of its plan to simplify its in-store management structure.

Despite the retailer’s best attempts to dress this up as modernising and to bury the news on the ninth of 10 paragraphs in its press release, all of the media coverage will focus on the job losses.

For many this will be viewed as more writing on the wall for chief executive Dalton Philips and his beleaguered management team. Today’s papers won’t make comfortable reading for the guys in Bradford.

However it is important to note that this move has been a long time in the making and is not simply a kneejerk reaction to the 7.1% fall in like-for-like sales in the last quarter or a reflection of how successful the ‘I’m cheaper’ price cutting campaign has been.

In fact Morrisons first announced it was looking at the possibly of a restructure of its in-store management late last year and has been running different versions of the new structure in stores since then.

And Morrisons is not alone, Asda and Tesco have both faced the wrath of angry staff in recent months as they muddle through their own restructure plans.

Clearly the major supermarkets are being squeezed like never before by the rampant Aldi and Lidl and cost savings have to be made – but there is a real danger with these moves that retailers will end up losing exactly the kind of dedicated, hard-working and experienced people that just might be best placed to help dig these retailers out of the holes they find themselves in.

How long will it be before these same said retailers are bemoaning a lack of experienced leaders ready to take on management positions and how this will have to be beefed up.

Much will be discussed over the next few days over why Morrisons is making this move now and what it says about where it is in the market – but today I think we just need to spare a thought for those members of staff who will be going through the traumatic redundancy process over the next month or so.

Read this: Morrisons job cuts are ‘disappointing’, says Sir Ken

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