Mothercare has informed 200 of its employees that their jobs are at the risk of redundancy. The affected roles are in the retailer’s head office, sourcing and distribution operations.
In order to meet obligations under UK employment law, a consultation period will begin with the affected employees in its head office in Watford. It is unlikely that all affected 200 individuals within the international company will lose their jobs, however, the firm intends to make a number of (highly likely predetermined) redundancies in order reduce its wage bill.
The company wants to ditch products for school age children and focus entirely on selling products relevant to children from birth to four years of age and maternity products for mothers-to-be.
This will see its clothing range change cut-back, stores currently stock children’s clothes for up to around seven or eight years of age. It will also mean that its Early Learning Centre toy brand (owned by Mothercare since summer 2007) will see a drastic reduction in the number of toys designed to appeal to older children.
Early Learning Centre also trades internationally under a franchise model, however, franchisees have a reasonable amount of freedom to adapt to the local market by stocking products that are not ELC branded, so producing a more concise toy range is not entirely detrimental to its current franchise partners.
In recent years, Mothercare has organised numerous restructures affecting both shop-floor employees and head office staff. The company is currently undergoing what it describes as a “Transformation and Growth” programme in order to consolidate the business as a profitable going concern.
This transformation has seen a number of CEOs come and go, additionally a near annual merry-go-round of P45 prizes has been dished-out to its retail and head office staff. Below is a list of some the most significant events that have affected job security at Mothercare in the current decade:
- 2011 : Extended store closure programme to commence, company promises its investors that even more shops will close after announcing disappointing financial results.
- 2012 : Head office, entire Watford office put at risk of redundancy. At the time technical roles involving internet design and similar were advertised on recruitment websites.
- 2013 : Store closure programme gathers pace, mainly affecting Early Learning Centre, a specialist toy shop chain that was bought by Mothercare in 2007.
- 2014 : Up to 500 Shop floor staff, including any member of staff working in UK stores that happened to be employed for 24 hours or more were at risk. Mothercare wanted to have almost all its staff on a 12 hour short-time contract, in order to replicate the employment practices of WH Smiths stores in railway stations and the supermarket chain Sainsbury’s. In recent years this practice, that is reminiscent of Sports Direct infamous news headlines, has since been abandoned.
- 2015 : supervisors and assistant managers, 140 junior members of store-level management were at risk of redundancy in order to restructure and expand the duties of low-level management within Mothercare.
- 2016 : An important year for the refurbishment of the company’s existing stores. A new design format is implemented. In some of the company’s larger scale shops, a purpose built community room named Mumspace is striped-out of former Children’s World sites, leaving numerous small-scale businesses who were led to believe that they were welcome to operate in a Mothercare store without paying room hire because they were driving footfall to Mothercare stores.
- 2017 : again Mothercare’s Watford based head office employees, as well as those further afield in Hong Kong are affected by a restructure. This time because the company wants to narrow the focus of the business.
The consultation period in Watford is likely to last 30 days.