John Lewis Partnership to cut up to 1,500 roles

The John Lewis Partnership is to cut up to 1,500 head office roles as part of plans to become a “leaner, simpler and faster” business.

The partnership is aiming to make £300 million worth of annual savings by 2022 through operational efficiencies.

JLP is planning  to make the job cuts between now and April 2021 in order to save another £50 million on top of the £50 million recently generated through other efficiencies.

The partnership said it will be trying to find new roles within the business for affected staff and will offer “market leading” redundancy support and funds for retraining for those who end up being made redundant.

Sharon White, chairman of the John Lewis Partnership, said: “Our partnership plan sets a course to create a thriving and sustainable business for the future. To achieve this we must be agile and able to adapt quickly to the changing needs of our customers.”

“Losing partners is incredibly hard as an employee-owned business. Wherever possible, we will seek to find new roles in the partnership and we’ll provide the best support and retraining opportunities for partners who leave us.”

The partnership has also announed that that Patrick Lewis, its executive director for finance, has decided to step down at the end of the year after 26 years with the business. He will be succeeded by Bérangère Michel who is currently executive director for customer service and a former finance director for John Lewis.

As part of the changes to head office, the size of the partnership’s executive team will also be reduced as it will  not be recruiting a new executive director for customer service. Instead these responsibilities will transfer to James Bailey, executive director for Waitrose, and Pippa Wicks, executive director for John Lewis.

White added: “It has been a privilege and pleasure to work with Patrick. He is the best of the partnership and personifies our purpose and our values. His determined drive to build the financial strength of the business has granted us opportunity to emerge stronger from the Covid crisis. Patrick told me a while ago of his wish to leave the partnership to seek new opportunities. I’m very grateful to him for agreeing to stay until we’d been able to identify a successor.”