Morrisons is to cut 720 head office jobs while ramping up the number of shop floor staff as it looks to drive sales through its core supermarket estate.

In the latest dramatic instalment of new CEO’s David Potts tenure, who has only been in the job for one month, Morrisons said it had begun recruiting 5,000 shop floor staff to further improve service, increase availability, and open more checkouts.

It also revealed it is beginning a consultation about a simplified management structure at its Bradford HQ. The number of people employed there has increased by 50% since 2008.

“We are focusing on the things that matter to our customers. That means having more of our staff in our stores, improving product availability and helping customers at our checkouts. We believe our customers and our staff will appreciate the improvements,” said Potts.  “To support this, we need a simpler, faster and cost-conscious head office and that requires some tough but necessary decisions.”

Staff members whose role is being made redundant will be offered a role in a Morrisons store and some will be redeployed in other parts of the business.

Morrisons employs more than 20,000 people in Yorkshire in its manufacturing, logistics depots and supermarkets and roles become vacant regularly, it said.

Morrisons will also be offering opportunities for voluntary redundancy. The consultation will last for at least 45 days.

The Grocer revealed earlier this month that Morrisons had started bringing in shop floor reinforcements as it looks to beef up its customer service and availability. Many of the new roles are part-time but the move has been widely welcomed by the rank and file. A lack of numbers in-store has been one of the main gripes among Morrisons employees for a long time.

Earlier this week, Morrisons also announced that group trading director Casper Meijer was leaving the business. Dutchman Meijer had been splitting his time between the UK and the Netherlands where his family remain and Potts is understood to have wanted a more firm commitment that he would spend more time in the UK.

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