Tesco to hire 16,000 new staff after DOUBLING online deliveries during coronavirus
TESCO has created 16,000 permanent roles after doubling its online deliveries during the coronavirus pandemic.
The supermarket created 20,000 temporary roles back in March after the outbreak led to people panic-buying and stripping shelves empty.
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But after lockdown was implemented, Brits switched from shopping for their food themselves to having deliveries sent to their homes instead.
This led to a spike in online orders for the supermarket.
It now has nearly 1.5 million customers a week online, up from around 600,000 at the start of the outbreak.
Before the outbreak, 9% of Tesco’s sales were online.
This has now jumped up to more than 16% of sales, with bosses predicting sales to jump to more than £5.5billion this year, up from £3.3billion last year.
Tesco’s new jobs are an addition to the 4,000 permanent jobs already created since the start of the pandemic.
The jobs include 10,000 pickers to build customers orders and 3,000 drivers to deliver them, plus in store and distribution roles.
Tesco said it’s offering the permanent jobs to the people who joined the supermarket first as temporary workers, before advertising the rest of the roles to outside applicants.
Jason Tarry, Tesco UK and Republic of Ireland chief executive, said: “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.
“These new roles will help us continue to meet online demand for the long term, and will create permanent employment opportunities for 16,000 people across the UK.”
Other supermarkets also began recruiting for staff at the beginning of the pandemic to help with a spike in demand.
Asda was looking for 5,000 new staff while Lidl advertised for 2,500 roles.
Co-op was hiring 5,000 people and Aldi hired 5,000 temporary and 4,000 permanent new members of staff.
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The news comes after 43,000 retail jobs have been axed since the start of coronavirus.
The Bank of England recently also predicted unemployment could hit 7.5 per cent due to the coronavirus crisis.
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