Dixons Carphone employees get free Calm subscription

Dixons Carphone has given everyone in its business a free, six-month subscription to Calm, an app for lowering stress and boosting wellbeing.

The retailer says that it made the move because “looking after our colleagues is more important than ever during difficult times”.

“Proud that we could make this happen. Calm for every single colleague. I am already benefiting from their sleep stories,” Andy Gamble, Chief Information Officer at Dixons Carphone, said in a LinkedIn post.

Omnichannel is our way of bringing the strengths of our stores and online to all our customers. 60% of our customers prefer to use both.

In H1, our UK & Ireland online sales grew +145%, additional sales of almost £800m, and we grew online market share by 6.5%pts. pic.twitter.com/xqBZogpM6d
— Dixons Carphone plc (@DixonsCarphone) December 16, 2020

Job cuts

In August of last year, Dixons Carphone said it was cutting 800 jobs as it looked to “make store team management structures leaner and create new roles and ways of working to deliver its Vision - We Help Everyone Enjoy Amazing Technology”.

The company, which owns Currys PC World, noted that retail managers, assistant managers and team leader roles would be cut, while new sales manager, customer experience and operational excellence manager positions would be created.

Some employees would be moved to its virtual ShopLive personal shopping service. The announcement came almost four months after the company closed all 531 of its standalone Carphone Warehouse stores, making more than 2,900 people redundant.

Dixons Carphone Chief Operating Officer, Mark Allsop, said: “We remain committed to our stores as part of an omnichannel future, where we offer the best of online and stores to our customers.”

“As part of this we want to empower our store leadership teams, create a flatter management structure and make it easy for our customers to shop with us, however they choose.”

“This proposal will ensure in-store roles are focused on giving a seamless customer experience and exceptional service across all our customer channels, whether online or in-store.”

“Sadly, this proposal means we have now entered into consultation with some of our store colleagues. This was not an easy decision and we’ll do everything possible to look after those colleagues we can’t find new roles for, financially and otherwise,” he concluded.