John Lewis Partnership to recruit 7,000 temporary roles this festive season

Wednesday 15 September 2021

The John Lewis Partnership is recruiting more than 7,000 temporary roles across the country this Christmas - 2,000 more than last year - to meet increased demand over the busy festive period and to help customers get what they need to celebrate.  

In Waitrose, we will recruit seasonal roles across our 331 Waitrose shops, including supermarket assistants, night shift workers and customer delivery drivers for our online grocery shopping service, Waitrose.com. We will also recruit temporary roles for our 34 John Lewis stores, including sales and merchandising positions. 

In addition, we are recruiting more than 550 permanent full-time driver and warehouse Partner roles across our distribution centres and Waitrose.com and John Lewis.com customer delivery centres.

Jobs will start to be advertised in phases on jlpjobs.com as well as Indeed.com and Google from 16 September throughout September and October.  A variety of working hours will be available.  

We will offer free food and drinks to Partners and temporary workers from 4 October to 31 December to help ensure we can attract the help we need.

Nikki Humphrey, People Director at the John Lewis Partnership, said: “We know that as the first Christmas after lockdown, customers will want to make it really special and we're throwing everything we can into helping them celebrate - our festive team will have a crucial role to play. We’re looking for people who can deliver extraordinary service to help customers get what they need to celebrate.  We look forward to welcoming people into our team across the country.”

Recruiting additional roles is just one way in which we are helping customers with their preparations for this festive period, whatever our customers are celebrating:

• 10 newly designed Christmas emporiums in our shops from October - a one-stop Christmas shop for a fun, inspirational experience, including in-store events and workshops for the whole family. 
• Over 100 brand new Christmas products in Waitrose alongside much- loved favourites, including Slow-Cooked Bone-In British Venison Shoulder, Heston from Waitrose, The Giant Cracking Penny and 20 vegan products. 
• New 300k sqft distribution centre at Bardon, Leicestershire which will help support additional online demand ahead of Black Friday this year.

About the John Lewis Partnership

The John Lewis Partnership owns and operates two of Britain's best-loved retail brands - John Lewis and Waitrose. Started as a radical idea nearly a century ago, the Partnership is the largest employee-owned business in the UK and amongst the largest in the world, with over 80,000 employees who are all Partners in the business. For all intents and purposes, the Partnership is a social enterprise; the profits made are reinvested into the business - for customers and Partners. John Lewis operates 34 shops plus one outlet across the UK as well as johnlewis.com. Waitrose has 331 shops in England, Scotland, Wales and the Channel Islands, including 59 convenience branches, and another 27 shops at Welcome Break locations. Our omnichannel business includes the online grocery service, Waitrose.com, as well as specialist online shops, including waitrosecellar.com for wine and waitroseflorist.com for plants and flowers.