Sainsbury’s has reportedly hired a team of consultants to help identify the 1000-plus head office jobs it won’t need as part of a £500 million cost-cutting scheme.
According to The Sunday Telegraph, McKinsey consultants have been appointed and the exact number of job losses is expected to be announced next month once the staff reduction plan is drawn up.
Sainsbury‘s employs 3000 staff outside of its stores, including at its Holborn base in London, its human resources centre in Manchester, its banking division in Edinburgh, and its IT team in Walsgrave, Coventry.
The latest staff cuts comes after Sainsbury’s announced in March that it was cutting 400 jobs, with a further 4000 employees facing major changes thanks to an overhaul of night shift work at 140 stores.
READ MORE: Sainsbury‘s beats market expectations with soaring sales
The redundancies are also part of Sainsbury‘s £500 million three-year, cost-saving target announced last November, just months after closing its £1.4 billion acquisition of Argos and Habitat.
Sainsbury’s said the redundancies were needed in order to avoid raising prices due to soaring costs as a result of the Brexit-hit sterling.
“We do not comment on speculation and would always make any announcement around jobs to our colleagues first,” a Sainsbury‘s spokesman said.
The grocer’s biggest rival, Tesco, has also endured a round of staff cuts to cope with UK consumers’ changing spending habits and the rise of discount grocers and online rivals.
In June, it announced 1200 job losses at its head office, just a week after announcing 1100 jobs would be culled at a call centre in Cardiff.
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