Waitrose has axed almost 100 jobs in a shakeup of its retail services division designed to place more emphasis on customer service and adapt to multichannel retailing.
The restructure will see 13 redundancies, with 75 employees redeployed to other parts of Waitrose, and another nine moving to John Lewis Partnership Services.
Before the shake-up, retail services looked after retail co-ordination, retail development and retail support.
Now, the slimmed-down 263-strong division will cover retail coordination, customer experience and retail change.
“We’ve been restructuring the business quietly in recent years. Overall, we have increased numbers at Bracknell by 400 in the last three years to support our growth,” said Waitrose MD Mark Price.
As well as providing specialist teams supporting operational branches, the new retail services structure includes a dedicated team “devoted to innovating and developing customer service within our shops,” said a Waitrose spokeswoman.
The retail change focus is also new, reflecting a need to “adapt retail services to the changing shape of the business, in particular the growing importance of multi-channel,” Waitrose said.
Waitrose has moved Helen Keppel-Compton, currently head of procurement, partnership services, to retail services director.
Keppel-Compton has worked in a number of roles within JLP over a 16-year period, most recently as head of multichannel content at John Lewis as well as various buying roles.
Current retail services director Ben Stimson will move to director, retail operations north next month, replacing Mark Wilson, who has left the Partnership.
Keppel-Compton and Stimson will report directly to retail director Rob Collins.
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