UK retailer Tesco is branching beyond the hiring of temporary staff during the COVID-19 pandemic, creating 16,000 permanent positions that will help support its growing online initiatives.
Tesco’s new jobs creation strategy will see 10,000 pickers assembling customer orders and 3,000 drivers to help deliver orders. It also plans to add a slew other roles in stores and at its distribution centres.
The retailer says many of those roles are expected to be filled by those workers who have been working in temporary positions during the pandemic. Tesco says it will look for additional spots to be filled by external candidates.
“Since the start of the pandemic, our colleagues have helped us to more than double our online capacity, safely serving nearly 1.5 million customers every week and prioritising vulnerable customers to ensure they get the food they need,” Jason Tarry, Tesco UK & ROI CEO, said. “These new roles will help us continue to meet online demand for the long term.”
Since the beginning of the pandemic, Tesco has nearly doubled the number of online shoppers its serves each week, from 600,000 to 1.5 million. Before March, around 9% of Tesco’s sales were online. The figure is now more than 16% of sales
Tesco says the number of positions might also increase depending on continued success. The retailer also says it plans to aide the government’s Kickstart initiative by employing 1,000 young people.
In addition, it will continue to run its apprenticeships and programmes aimed at bringing in school leavers and graduates, with more than 80 young people set to join schemes across stores, distribution centres and offices.
