John Lewis: How all the major changes will impact staff and shoppers

John Lewis is poised to make a series of major changes that will affect all of its stores across the country and its partners.

The organisation announced a restructuring plan yesterday that it described as a “multimillion pound” investment in technology and what it has described as ‘simplification’ would help “improve our customer service and make sure our partners are in the right place, doing the right tasks at the right time.”

The proposal however is expected to see John Lewis’ headcount be reduced by 153 roles.

A John Lewis spokesperson said: “We’re seeking to make sure partners are in the right place at the right time to help customers.

“We’re also removing unnecessary tasks, and introducing new technology to make their roles easier. 

“We carried out similar changes in Waitrose earlier this year, with customer and partner feedback increasing significantly since. It’s since been ranked the no.1 supermarket for customer satisfaction.”

Below, City A.M. sets out all the major changes that John Lewis is to roll out across all its stores in the coming months:

John Lewis said that its proposals are expected to see an increase in the amount of face-to-face time between its partners and customers.

The department store chain said its technology investments will include £5m in new digital headsets which are aimed at allowing its partners to ‘easily interact with one another across the store at the touch of the button’.

John Lewis has argued that this will ‘significantly cut wait times, and remove the need for partners to have to track each other down in the branch’.

It added that customers will also be able to call for assistance from a partner, by using call points installed at key areas including fitting rooms and customer collection points.

John Lewis has already rolled out more than 6,000 headsets across its stores, with the network at its Oxford Street site in London becoming the single biggest headset operation in Europe.

The brand is also investing £1m in mobile printers so that its partners can ‘easily replace missing shelf-edge labels’. It said this is currently a ‘labour intensive process’.

John Lewis is also introducing mobile payment to its 5,000 partner devices allowing them to serve customers on the shop floor rather than having to direct them to the nearest till.

It said this will speed up transactions for customers, reduce queues and importantly increase sales and conversion. 

It also said tat it is looking to ‘realign’  partners’ hours to make sure they are ‘focused on meeting the needs of our customers’.

John Lewis is also looking to change partners’ roles and remove the distinction between front and back of house.

It has argued that by bringing the two together, branches would ‘benefit from greater flexibility – enabling more partners to support on the shopfloor during busy periods’.

The organisation added that is ‘simplifying processes and ways of working in our shops – putting a greater focus on pre-trade activity; doubling down on shop standards, and making sure that product availability is as high as possible for customer’.

Also among John Lewis’s changes is simplifying how it replenishes its shops on a daily basis which it said will help it improve availability of products for its customers.

As part of that, it is designing a simpler stock process that gets products to the shelf quicker and more efficiently, as well as looking at its pre-opening replenishment and how its stream and sort stock.