In a sweeping move, Tesco have decided to move away from have specific Trading Managers  for different areas, such a Fresh Food Trading Manager, Non-Food Trading Manager  etc,  and replace this with a single Deputy Manager.  Existing Trading managers will be assessed against the new Deputy Role and those who do not make the grade will be demoted to the next level below – Line Managers.  In the majority of stores affected there are at least three Trading Managers, all of whom will be competing against each other to avoid demotion.  In what is, an already fraught and dog-eat-dog environment, this is guaranteed to make for a very unhappy summer at the retailers.

There seems to be considerable anger at this move, particularly from newly appointed trading managers, whom have spent the past twelve months training to become a Trading Manager (including up to three months in some cases actually fulfilling the role without the extra pay, good for development apparently!) only to find that the role is now defunct.  Why Tesco’s decided to do this to its developing management population is  somewhat a mystery, as this move was first floated 4 years ago – the feeling is, once again, that the executives either simply are not even bothering to pretend to care about their Managers anymore or they simply do not know what they are doing on a month upon month basis.  Neither of which are instilling their store teams with any confidence.

Additionally, not content with destroying the faint presence of morale amongst the Trading Managers, the Line Managers themselves were also told today that Managers responsible for the Fresh Food Deli Counters would no longer have a job, again these managers are facing sideways movements into roles they do not want or, if they recieved a poor review at the end of last year, demotion to the lower level of Team Leader.  Once again, some of these manager have only just been appointed to these roles and feel used and abused.

So this is the response to being trounced by its competitors after the first quarter, its 3.7% growth being declared as “solid” by the board despite being the lowest of all the Supermarket chains. Once again it is the UK staff which are made to suffer.

More to follow tommorow, when we have more information.

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