UK Firms Offer Up To £ 2,000 Sign Up Bonus Amid Christmas Labor Shortage | Supply chain crisis

UK employers are offering bonuses of up to £ 2,000 to hire Christmas workers as they fear staff shortages will disrupt the Christmas season.

Research by the Adzuna job website has shown that there are currently 26,307 seasonal vacancies ahead of the crucial Christmas shopping season, almost twice as many as 13,668 at the same time a year ago.

Given the severe staff shortage caused by Covid and Brexit, the number of seasonal job openings is more than a quarter higher than the 20,488 in 2019 before the start of the pandemic.

Employers are preparing to hire an army of more than 130,000 additional employees this winter to prepare a rush, according to analysis of more than 1.2 million job postings on the Adzuna website, which government statisticians track for early signs from the job market meet demand for goods and services.

Adzuna said there are more than 1,300 vacancies with a Christmas bonus, including rewards of up to £ 2,000 for seasonal warehouse workers from Amazon, bonuses of £ 1,000 for DPD warehouse night sorters and payments of £ 500 for new recruits at Ocado, AO. com and handpicked hotels.

Tesco is said to be hiring the most seasonal workers, with 871 jobs open across the UK this winter, out of a total of 30,000 additional fixed-term positions at the retailer. Delivery company Hermes still has 740 open positions and Royal Mail 200 to handle deliveries after a boom in online shopping during the pandemic.

Given the shortage of truck drivers and warehouse staff that creates bottlenecks on the main road before Christmas, the figures are compiled due to concerns about possible disruptions in the run-up to Christmas.

Hospitality, retail and logistics representatives told MPs on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee of the Commons on Thursday that they hoped Christmas could go on smoothly despite chronic staff shortages, severe delivery disruptions and rising costs.

Kate Nicholls, managing director of UK Hospitality, said supply chains for pubs, hotels and restaurants are “nowhere near resilient”. She said about 20% of deliveries were interrupted, which resulted in food and drinks being delivered at the wrong time and at higher prices.

“We’re going to deliver Christmas as well as we can, but not as well as we’d like,” she said.

Tom Southall, policy director of the Cold Chain Federation, which represents the refrigeration logistics sector, said a shortage of truck drivers and warehouse staff could affect deliveries and cause bottlenecks on supermarket shelves.

“Christmas as always? Probably not. As that will manifest, there may be gaps on the shelves as we’ve seen in the past few months, ”he said.

Ben Broadbent, an assistant governor for the Bank of England, told the committee that labor shortages would drive wages higher in some sectors, which could lead to higher inflation.

Although he said he expects the effects of labor shortages to subside when Covid’s disruption to the economy subsides, he said higher wages were “inevitable” in some sectors.

“When you run out of people and they are very specialized, production in this sector will end up being limited, apart from labor-saving technology. And the means to limit that will be higher wages and prices, ”he said.

Adzuna’s research found that most job vacancies were in sectors where labor shortages are currently most acute; in trade, logistics and storage.

Andrew Hunter, co-founder of Adzuna, said employers will have to work harder than ever to fill seasonal jobs this year amid a staff shortage across the country.

“This can be seen in the number of Christmas jobs still open, which is twice as high as last year.”

He said large companies with flexible budgets are pushing to fill gaps in their temporary Christmas workforce with bonuses, but smaller companies may struggle to compete.

“The holiday season is crucial for many businesses and if they cannot address their labor shortage soon it could be detrimental to both businesses and consumers,” he said.