Every Christmas helper helps

An army of extra helpers will take to the shop floor at Britain’s biggest retailer this week. Thousands of colleagues from Tesco’s head office will join teams in stores around the UK to help serve the millions of extra customers expected in the last few days before Christmas.

Buyers and lawyers, marketeers and personnel managers, graduate trainees and Directors will swap their suits for uniforms for two days each. With nearly 5,000 people taking part, providing an extra 60,000 hours of customer service in almost 1,000 stores, it’s the biggest ‘Helping Hands’ programme Tesco has ever run.

Launched more than 10 years ago, ‘Helping Hands’ is an annual event that takes place at Christmas and Easter to support store teams at the busiest time of year. It also helps Head Office colleagues keep in touch with the customers they work hard to serve.

This year, the focus is on ‘Making Moments Matter’, with colleagues being encouraged to deliver great service to customers by remembering that it’s the little things that make a big difference, especially at Christmas.

Judith Nelson, UK Personnel Director at Tesco, said “I’m really proud that so many colleagues will be swapping their desks for Tesco’s shop floors this Christmas and supporting our commitment to deliver great service for our customers. I’ll be joining the team at my local store near Cambridge and whether I’m packing bags at the till or helping to fill our fresh fruit trays up, it’ll be a great chance to meet new customers and colleagues.”



Notes to Editors:

- Tesco is the UK’s largest retailer and public sector employer, with 300,000 colleagues and almost 3,000 stores

- ‘Making Moments Matter’ is a programme of customer service training that has been delivered to all colleagues and stores, and marks part of Tesco’s commitment to improving Staff and Service, as set out by Chief Executive Phillip Clarke in April 2012 in his six-point £1bn plan for the UK business

- So far, 500,000 hours of training have been delivered as part of the ‘Making Moments Matter’ initiative

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Tesco is the UK’s largest retailer and one of the world’s leading international retailers. Tesco has more than 6,000 stores worldwide, employing almost 520,000 people in the 14 countries in which it operates.
Our core purpose is to create value for customers to earn their lifetime loyalty. Our success depends on people: the people who shop with us and the people who work with us.