Hundreds of Waitrose customer service workers at a key outsourcer that previously faced redundancy are no longer at risk.
The John Lewis Partnership, which also owns Waitrose, was reported back in February to be planning to reduce the number of staff it employs at customer service provider Foundever as it looked to streamline costs.
According to The Grocer, most of the 200 staff working on the Waitrose team had been given 45 days redundancy notice.
However, Foundever is understood to have emailed impacted workers last week to inform them they were “no longer at risk of redundancy” after a period of “natural attrition”.
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This includes a small number of redundancies at team management level and 100 staff members that had worked on the Waitrose team transferred to elsewhere within the company.
A Foundever spokeswoman told The Grocer: “Our objective is always to deliver for our clients, even as their needs change, while setting up our colleagues for success.
“In this case, it was always our intention to use the consultation process to find new internal opportunities for colleagues impacted by the changed structure of our John Lewis team.
“We are very pleased that it was possible for so many to stay within the company and now use their existing expertise to deliver for other clients.”
JLP has been contacted for comment.
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