News: Rotherham IKEA jobs at risk

138 jobs are at risk as Swedish furniture retailer, IKEA announced proposals to close their Dearne Valley contact centre in March 2011.

The Rotherham centre primarily supports the retail operation in handling customer contacts in relation to general customer service queries, complaints and supports the customer contacts for the shop online channel.

In an announcement to staff, the company proposed to amalgamate all customer contacts to their Peterborough contact centre that primarily supports central customer distribution orders as well as general customer service queries and case handling for our kitchen- and bathroom installation services.

At the beginning of the financial year, the group decided to own the land and buildings where they operate. The Dearne Valley centre is rented and the Peterbrough centre is owned by IKEA.

The group stated that "both sites are under-utilised in terms of seating capacity."

In an announcement to staff, IKEA said: "The fact that we operate in two sites comes with some significant drawbacks in terms of cost, consistency, productivity, duplication, impact on the shared resources.

"Further to a comprehensive review, in which a number of different scenarios were considered, IKEA proposes to amalgamate all customer contacts in the IKEA-owned Peterborough site which would result in the closure of the rented Dearne Valley contact centre facility on the 23rd of March 2011.

"These changes would allow us to serve our customers in a better, faster and more consistent way by offering them a complete and integrated experience through a combination of self-service technology and multi-skilled co-workers."

"This proposal remains at a formative stage with 138 IKEA co-workers and will be subject to extensive consultation with the appropriate site committees. IKEA very much regrets any potential loss of a significant number of valued competent co-workers.

"We will consult thoroughly with the site representatives about this and we will aim to minimise the impact of the proposed changes as much as possible."

This month IKEA published its financial results for the first time, revealing a 7.7% rise in sales. Total sales were 23.1bn euros ($31.7bn, £20bn) for the year ending in August.

IKEA website

Images: ikea.com