ONE of Jersey’s best-known retail businesses is trialling opening five days a week rather than six because of staff shortages.
Voisins department store owner Gerald Voisin said they were ‘spread more thinly’ and that his business was 12% short of its normal staffing level – a struggle to recruit reflected in the retail sector as a whole and industries across the Island.
Mr Voisin added that a mixture of staffing problems and the traditionally quiet January trading period had led to the five-week trial, with the store closing on Mondays.
Mr Voisin said he did not expect this to affect their sales.
‘I’m keen to emphasise that this is a trial and we will see how the customers respond,’ he said. ‘We’re hoping to make back the sales in the rest of the week.
‘Our staff will serve our customers better in the week. It will be less stressful for them having to cover on their days off.
‘They can have two days off on Sunday and Monday. Our customers will still be able to shop Tuesday to Saturday.’
Mr Voisin added: ‘Like everyone, we are 12% short of staff. Most of those people are customer-facing. The staff are working extremely hard covering four vacancies.’
The high cost of living has been cited as a key barrier for people moving to the Island for work, with Mr Voisin saying he was reluctant to recruit outside of Jersey.
‘You need someone who can adapt to the type of accommodation available,’ he said. ‘If you have someone who leaves a three-bedroom house in Manchester, they may struggle when coming into a small flat in Jersey.
‘We haven’t looked further afield. When we bring people in from the UK, they spend a short amount of time here, they may have no friends and they are cut off from their family.’
While staff shortages have largely affected customer service roles in Voisins, another department store has had issues recruiting for supervisory and management roles.
De Gruchy’s owner John Marquis labelled his staff ‘a resilient bunch’ and said that the Christmas period had largely been ‘a good result’. He added that there were currently no plans to reduce the opening hours of the store.
He said: ‘We are spread more thinly. There have been queues at the tills. There are fewer staff free for customer interaction.
‘Supervisory and management roles are harder to fill, with the living costs of the Island.’
Mr Marquis said that supplies of stock had not been affected in the way that food had and they were getting close to their pre-pandemic position. ‘With glass and perfume bottles,’ he said, ‘internationally the supply of glass has been limited.’
Meanwhile, the Island’s leading food retailer, SandPiperCI, said it had experienced problems importing international stock, but there were no plans to change their opening hours.
A spokesperson for the company said: ‘Global supply chains remain under pressure, especially goods from China.
‘This has affected non-food items more than foods. More locally, recent persistent windy weather conditions has continued to cause sailing issues and has sometimes resulted in goods arriving later than planned.’
