Supermarket giant Asda has announced plans to recruit 15,000 temporary workers for the festive period.
The retailer is recruiting seasonal workers to fulfil a variety of roles on checkouts, on the shop floor, and for its online delivery operation.
Hayley Tatum, chief people officer at Asda, said: “We will do all we can to make sure customers have a fantastic Christmas and recruiting an extra 15,000 colleagues across our stores, depots and home delivery service will help us to provide them with great products and excellent service when they shop with us during the festive season.”
Around 500 roles are based in Asda’s depots, 1,500 are home delivery driver positions, with the remainder being store-based roles across the UK. There will be opportunities for some of the seasonal staff to remain with Asda into the New Year to cover permanent colleagues who take holidays after the busy Christmas period.
Temporary workers
Sainsbury’s announced similar plans earlier this month, with plans to hire 14,500 store roles, 4,500 warehouse and logistics staff, and 3,000 delivery drivers. Tesco is recruiting 30,000 temporary staff for the festive period. Half of the roles have been filled by temporary workers who joined Tesco during the pandemic and have had their contracts extended to cover Christmas.
This month Tesco also announced plans to hire 3,000 permanent warehouse staff, offering a £500 bonus for those joining by 30 October and a £250 bonus for those hired over the subsequent four weeks.
However, analysis by jobs board Indeed found that as of 1 October 2021, the proportion of searches made for seasonal roles by jobseekers was down 27% compared with 2019 and 33% below its 2018 level.
Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance
Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday
According to the ONS’s latest labour force survey the number of job vacancies in July to September 2021 was a record high of 1,102,000, an increase of 318,000 from its pre-pandemic (January to March 2020) level.
HR roles in retail and wholesale on Personnel Today
Browse more HR roles in retail and wholesale
