Wilko is shaking up its senior leadership team while cutting hundreds of jobs in a cost-saving drive.
The variety discounter is axing 150 assistant store manager roles while reducing the hours of team supervisors in 150 stores, equivalent to a further 150 full-time job losses.
Dozens of head office management roles in commercial, retail operations, merchandising, marketing and finance are also affected, in redundancies first reported by the Guardian.
The cuts are on top of 95 redundancies announced in January at Wilko’s contact centre in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, ahead of customer services being outsourced to a South African company later this month.
“We’re fully supporting any affected individuals,” said Wilko CEO Mark Jackson. “We know change will be unsettling to our team members and the wider business, and we’re acting swiftly to put in place the new organisational structure.”
Wilko – which recently secured a £40m two-year revolving credit facility to make sure it won’t run out of money this year if trading declines – has also announced a string of senior appointments.
Karen Mackay has resigned as chief finance officer, to be replaced by Dave Murphy, who is being promoted from the role of finance director. Mackay was appointed CFO in July 2020 while Murphy was made FD as recently as September 2022.
Among other changes, Amanda Jones, Wilko’s retail director since April last year, is now being promoted to the new role of chief operating officer.
Deborah Rabey, a former category director for Tesco, joins Wilko as interim chief customer officer to lead the commercial, digital and marketing teams.
Read more: Why is Wilko struggling? Look no further than B&M’s success
Anne-Marie Haydock is being promoted to the role of HR director, to replace Kate Price, who is set to leave the business in April following a handover period.
Wilko reported a £36.8m loss before tax in its latest full-year accounts, to 29 January 2022, pointing to weak high street footfall.
The retailer, which employs 16,000 people, has been attempting to turn around its fortunes by regearing leases and developing its e-commerce proposition, including recently rolling out click & collect to all 400 stores.
There have also been a number recent leadership changes, including the stepping aside of major shareholder Lisa Wilkinson as chair in January, to be replaced by Chris Howell. Wilkinson remains on the board as family director.
Jackson, himself only appointed CEO in December, said of the latest changes: “We’ve already begun our turnaround programme to drive Wilko forward. As part of this, we quickly identified significant changes to the Wilko operating model to enable us to stabilise the business, and then thrive again.
“This includes some planned and considered changes to our management structure at both our stores and head office.”
Having reviewed the leadership structure, Wilko now needed to “remove both the duplication of functions and operating costs,” he said.
Smaller variety discounter The Original Factory Shop, which has about 180 stores, is offering guaranteed job interviews to Wilko workers facing redundancy.
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