A serious recruitment blunder involving a senior HR chief has sparked a row between two major high-street retailers, Personnel Today has learned.
DIY store B&Q announced in December that Rob Bacon, chief operations officer at Carphone Warehouse Europe, was to be the director of customer and employee brand, a newly created position which encompassed HR, following a board restructure.
But one month later, Bacon revealed he would remain with the telecommunications giant for the foreseeable future, with a spokesman at Carphone Warehouse telling Personnel Today that Bacon was never leaving to begin with.
“Rob [Bacon] has certainly not accepted a role with B&Q,” the spokesman said. “He is very much staying with Carphone Warehouse and is looking forward to carrying on with his international duties.”
A spokeswoman at B&Q said Bacon had decided not to join the company after all, and that the role of customer and employee brand director was also being struck from the board. Overall responsibility for HR would fall to its original ‘owner’ operations and HR director Martyn Phillips.
“Rob Bacon is not joining the board and we can’t comment on his personal reasons for that,” a B&Q spokeswoman told Personnel Today.
“We did name him in our press release, but he has never joined B&Q. As Rob isn’t joining B&Q we’re going to work with the existing skills and experience of our leadership team, and create a smaller, together and focused board [that will] enable effective decision making and execution.”
Meanwhile, Terry Hartwell, group property director, hasleft the B&Q board to work at parent company Kingfisher, reducing thenumber of people on the board from eight to six.
Neither Rob Bacon nor Martyn Phillips were available for comment.
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