The parent company of Bensons for Beds and Harveys has announced a raft of changes to its leadership team eight weeks after Stuart Machin stepped into the chief executive role.
Machin, who joined Steinhoff in August to lead its UK retail home and housewares division, created new chief operations officer and chief customer officer roles as part of a wider leadership restructure and commercial strategy.
Previously managing director of Bensons for Beds, Alan Williams has now been promoted to the new role of chief operations officer while Dean Simpson has been given the new position of chief operations officer for Harveys.
Williams and Simpson will be responsible for the implementation of customer and people plans, visual merchandising strategy, and driving sales performance at their respective retail chains.
Meanwhile, Henry Swift has been appointed to the new position of chief customer officer after previously being interim marketing director. He will be responsible for the end-to-end customer journey, as well as heading up marketing, public relations and the customer services team.
Chily Fachler has been appointed to the position of chief information officer, Mark Jackson has been appointed finance director for both Bensons for Beds and Harveys after joining the business in August, and Chris Brougham has been appointed to a new role of project manager.
Debbie Jones will continue in her role as the newly titled head of people, talent and development, while head of strategic programmes Jamie Danby will now report directly to Machin.
David O‘Connor and Mark Cort will remain in their roles of commercial director for Harveys and commercial director for Bensons respectively, as will Kalwant Singh in his role as supply chain and logistics director.
In a statement, Machin said the company plans to launch an internal talent development programme to give staff the opportunity to develop their careers within Steinhoff.
“We will ensure we develop and support women in leadership,” he said.
“I have already spoken to many of our female leaders and I will be chairing a women in leadership program over the course of this year to ensure we improve on our gender diversity throughout the business.”
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