Store to stage its biggest ever head office cull

Nearly a third of head office staff, up to 720 employees, will lose their jobs although the group said it hopes to offer many another role in the organisation.

As a significant employer in Yorkshire, it said it is keen to offer staff another job in the region and it will swallow any additional payroll costs.

Staff at the group’s headquarters at Hilmore House in Bradford were put on redundancy notice yesterday. The site employs 2,300 people.

At the same time the group announced plans to recruit an extra 5,000 staff in stores to boost the number of workers on the shop floor.

The group currently has close to 100,000 workers in its stores, so this equates to a five per cent increase in the number of staff in each store.

Morrisons said it needs to focus on what matters to customers - making sure that shelves are stacked and providing more staff at the check out.

The group pointed out that the number of head office staff has increased by 50 per cent since 2008 and the perception is that stores have suffered from too much investment in top management and not enough on customer facing staff.

Roger Owen, the former property director, has accused former boss Dalton Philips of making the group top heavy “with too many chiefs and not enough Indians”.

Morrisons said affected staff will be offered roles in store and some will be redeployed in other parts of the business.

Chief executive David Potts said: “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.

“To support this, we need a simpler, faster and cost-conscious head office and that requires some tough but necessary decisions.”

City analysts, who have been very critical of the former management for alienating customers, welcomed the news.

Analyst Clive Black at Shore Capital said: “David Potts has taken further important steps to enhance the culture of the group and to make it more effective for customers and shareholders alike. Such decisions are demonstrably difficult to take but we see them as important and right for the company. Morrison’s central overhead has mushroomed since 2008 with limited discernible customer benefit.”

The redundancies follow the ousting of six directors from the 11-strong management team as Mr Potts radically restructures the business.

Last month Morrisons announced losses of £792m for the year to February 1. Like-for-like sales fell six per cent - the worst performance among the big four supermarkets.