1,000 jobs go in Boots shake-up

BOOTS is poised to axe up to 1,000 head office jobs in a shake-up by new chief executive Richard Baker. The cull, which follows massive job cuts last year, will affect almost 15% of the 7,000 staff at Boots' headquarters in Nottingham.

Confirmation is expected this week when the company updates investors about Christmas trading. Analysts forecast a lacklustre statement.

The cuts will be the most significant action by Baker since he joined from Asda last September. He is known to have been shocked at the number of staff in Nottingham compared with the tight focus on cost control at Asda, where he was chief operating officer.

Boots axed 500 head office jobs last year as part of a strategy to save £100m. A further 700 jobs went when the Wellbeing beauty treatments arm was closed while a factory in Airdrie, Lanarkshire, was shut with the loss of 1,000 jobs.

One of Baker's first initiatives on joining Boots was to give extra power to store managers, mirroring a system that had been strikingly successful in his former job.

The strategy awards the managers greater freedom in areas such as recruitment and marketing, effectively cutting out a large part of the role played by head office staff.

In a further snub to employees at the sprawling Boots headquarters, Baker is reported to have told colleagues that he had 'searched high and low in Boots' head office and not found a retailer yet'.

Though a series of revival strategies has been introduced and abandoned in recent years, Boots still has a reputation as one of the most bloated and bureaucratic retailers on the High Street.

Though staff were braced for job cuts, they are expected to be stunned by the scale of the latest cull. However, the shake-up is likely to be well-received in the City.

Baker, who has been highly critical of previous management and its failure to invest, has already asked head office managers to trim their budgets by £3m.

Baker, whose appointment was widely seen as heralding a culture change, wants to achieve these savings to release the money to revamp Boots' chain of 1,400 shops.

No jobs safe in big switch

THE accelerating white-collar jobs drain, with tens of thousands of skilled posts being 'outsourced' to developing countries, will be underlined by labour market figures this week, writes Dan Atkinson.

They will show a huge shift out of jobs that earn foreign currency to 'local' service industry and public sector posts that do not earn foreign exchange.

Until recently, it was assumed high-value service industries would help fill the gap by selling their wares abroad. But even these jobs are being shifted overseas.

Dhaval Joshi, economist at investment bank SG, said: 'This is no longer simply to do with call centres. Firms are outsourcing pharmaceutical research, insurance claims analysis, and even accounting and auditing. Whole industries and professions once thought secure are no longer safe.'