Morrisons and Iceland are taking on thousands of more permanent staff to meet the recent surge in demand for home deliveries.
Morrisons took on 45,000 extra temporary staff during the height of the coronavirus crisis. About 25,000 of those are still working for the supermarket, and more than 6,000 have already been given permanent jobs.
Alongside its interim results tomorrow, Morrisons is expected to announce that it plans to make significantly more of temporary positions permanent in the coming weeks. A spokesperson said: “Morrisons has been playing its full part in feeding the nation and that has required the largest recruitment drive our company has ever seen.”
The retailer also revealed today that it has partnered with McCarthy & Stone, a leading developer and manager of retirement communities, to extend its doorstep food delivery service to its homeowners. Following a trial, McCarthy & Stone’s 441 sites can now order groceries from Morrisons over the phone using a dedicated telesales line.
Morrisons is expected to post double-digit quarterly sales growth when it reports figures for the first six months of its financial year after benefitting from increased demand for groceries during the pandemic, particularly in the online channel. Industry data has shown the chain as being one of the best performing supermarkets in recent months.
Meanwhile, Iceland has revealed that it will have created more than 3,000 new jobs between March this year and Christmas to cope with raised demand for home deliveries.
Whilst lockdown had boosted online orders by up to 300%, the frozen food specialist said demand had shown no sign of slowing. It now has the ability to handle 750,000 orders a week.
The new jobs will include extra delivery drivers and more staff in stores for picking online orders. Iceland is also increasing the size of its delivery fleet by just under a third.
David Devany, Chief Customer and Digital Officer at Iceland, said: “We’ve been blown away by the demand for deliveries over the past six months with a four-fold increase in online orders since the beginning of lockdown.
“We see no sign of a slowdown in the demand for deliveries in the run-up to Christmas, so a recruitment drive for more permanent staff was essential.”
