Wal-Mart’s UK supermarket chain Asda has announced that it is creating 2,250 new shop floor jobs, a week after announcing that it was cutting 1,000 staff.
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Each one of its 279 stores nationwide is set to recruit around eight new colleagues for a range of frontline customer service roles, it said. The new jobs will create an additional 45,000 shop floor colleague hours per week.
“The jobs we are announcing today will help us serve our 12m weekly customers even better. They are all customer facing roles on the shop floor which will ensure our colleagues are always happy to help,” said David Smith, Asda’s people director
Last week Asda announced it was removing around five management roles per store as part of its strategy to simplify its business, re-invest and make it fit for the future. The new jobs announced today are designed to make each of its stores even more customer focused.
“It would have been insensitive last week to talk about job creation when some of our colleagues were facing uncertainty about their roles. Our intention is to redeploy as many of them as possible whilst continuing to create new jobs like these in all our stores,” David added.
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By GlobalDataOver the past six years Asda has created more than 40,000 jobs and has consistently been voted one of the top places to work in the UK and Europe. This year alone, the supermarket expects to create around 6,600 jobs. It also anticipates that it will be able to redeploy around four out of ten store managers who were affected by last week’s announcement.
As part of the company restructure Angela Spindler has been given a new role – customer and strategy director. In addition to marketing, format development and business strategy, Angela is now also responsible for customer service. It is the first time Asda has had an executive board role that is so focused on the customer.
