With customers shopping differently this December, Sainsbury’s has created 12,000 seasonal roles and supercharged its digital offer in order to help everyone find what they need for Christmas safely, quickly and conveniently.
To serve as many online shoppers as possible this Christmas, 12,000 colleagues – almost double the number recruited last year – will join Sainsbury’s supermarkets and help fulfil online grocery orders, from driving deliveries to homes to picking and packing products in store.
Sainsbury’s Christmas store colleagues will receive £9.30 per hour, the highest rate of pay of the major supermarkets. Colleagues working in Greater London will receive £9.55 per hour and those in Zones 1 and 2 of London will receive £9.90 per hour.
Sainsbury’s is also offering extra hours to existing colleagues who may want extra work in the run up to Christmas. All office-based colleagues will also be working for two full days in stores.
Sainsbury’s is set to hire a total of 75,000 people by March 2021, including creating 6,000 permanent roles, the majority of which will support the rapid growth of Sainsbury’s Groceries Online. The expansion of online groceries offers colleagues affected by the closure of meat, fish and deli counters and some Argos stores the opportunity to redeploy, as well as the potential for those in temporary roles to become permanent.
To help customers shop safely, swiftly and spend less time in stores, Sainsbury’s has rolled out SmartShop to over 1,100 stores. The milestone includes all supermarkets and over 500 convenience stores with SmartShop Mobile Pay, offering totally till-free and contactless shopping. In March just nine Sainsbury’s Locals offered the technology to customers.
For customers who want to get their Christmas groceries within minutes, Sainsbury’s offers rapid food deliveries from Chop Chop, Deliveroo and Uber Eats. The supermarket has expanded its own Chop Chop service to 15 cities and boosted it further through third party tie-ups so it can serve more shoppers this way.
This year Sainsbury’s has more than doubled its Groceries Online capacity. The retailer will fulfil over 750,000 online grocery orders a week this December, either by delivering to customers’ doors or through Click & Collect. Over 200 more supermarkets are offering Click & Collect than they were in March.
Clo Moriarty, Sainsbury’s Retail and Digital Director, said: “This Christmas will be like no other and the way customers want to shop for their celebrations has changed completely. To help them find everything they need and shop how they want, we’re recruiting thousands more Christmas colleagues than in previous years.
'The roles will receive the highest rate of pay of the major supermarkets while supporting in our superstores and helping fulfil online grocery orders, where we’ve more than doubled capacity since March. For customers who want to get in and out of stores quickly, our SmartShop app is now in over 1,100 stores.
“We’re doing everything we can to make Christmas special for our customers and we’re asking them to play their part by shopping early and shopping alone, wherever possible. This will really help everyone spend less time queuing and more time celebrating.”