Nine of the 11 networks ZF analyzed have fewer employees in each supermarket, hypermarket and discount or cash&carry store, and the only exceptions are Lidl and Profi.
A Kaufland hypermarket had about 183 employees on average in 2009, 80 more than last year, after five years of crisis and moderate consumer spending. Mega Image, the largest retail chain in Romania with more than 400 supermarkets and convenience stores, cut the number of staff down to one third in 2009-2014.
“This trend of the number of employees per store is natural. Lower sales mean fewer employees needed because you have less merchandise coming in and therefore fewer people to unload it, which means fewer billed items, therefore fewer people working the cash register,” explains a modern retail top executive.
The 11 modern retail chains considered employed 45 people per store on average last year, down from 48 the previous year and 87 in 2009. The ranking does not include Real, which owns four hypermarkets in Romania, because it has not filed its yearly report with the Finance Ministry yet. The number of employees per store was calculated without taking into account the opening date or the format of the stores.
Consumer spending shrank by more than 15% in 2009-2011 and then increased slightly in the next two years. Last year saw a significant rebound, but the shopping appetite was still far from 2007-2008.
“The trend of the number of employees per store may be because of the improvement of network efficiency and also of retailers opening smaller format stores in the past few years,” says Cristina Savuica, managing partner of recruitment and personnel leasing firm Lugera & Makler.
“A store outside Bucharest needs fewer employees in line with its sales. That goes for smaller format stores, too.”
Consumer spending decline and a change in consumer spending habits have made retail chains introduce new convenience store formats and smaller store formats in the past few years.
“Moreover, the decline in the number of employees per store has to be considered from the perspective of technological progress that made retailers need fewer employees, as well. They also decided to outsource more and lease temporary personnel especially during busy times of the year,” Cristina Savuica added.
Modern retailers expanded fast during the crisis, going from some 500 stores in 2009 to 1,500 at the end of last year. Most stores opened were supermarkets and convenience stores, though. Even the networks that did not open too many stores or kept going with the same store format saw a decline in the number of employees per store. Cora, for instance, had about 900 employees per store in 2009 and 400 at the end of 2014. Selgros, which opened only one store in 2009-2014, too had fewer employees per store at the end of last year, 204, instead of 272.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)