Interview: Currys stores director on powering up staff and tech investments

Currys has spent the past year upgrading its store estate through the launch of new category ranges and digital upgrades as part of its commitment to “make the customer shopping experience easier”.

The investment is paying off as the electricals giant raised its full-year profit guidance for the third time last month, boosted by a 4% increase in sales across the UK and Ireland.

Currys kicked off its upgrade programme last May, transforming 65 of its mid-size stores to feature a wider range of its tech, improved store layouts and back of house improvements to support staff.

Currys stores director for the UK and Ireland Matthew Speight.”We felt it was important that we started to invest in the space that we sell our amazing technology in,” notes 

We spoke to Currys UK and Ireland stores director Matthew Speight about how the business is investing to ramp up staff expertise, drive range expansion and bring retail crime to heel.

More in store

Speight estimates that “just over a third” of the Currys’ stores have now received investment in its current upgrade initiative, including 50 of its largest stores in the UK.

Speight says that the upgrades are “really about changing the space to add in more choice” for shoppers.

Alongside expanding the products in its core TV and computing ranges, the director says the business has also introduced new categories “that you perhaps wouldn’t have associated with Currys previously”.

He explains that these are electronics “in the majority of cases”, which are “designed to be more seasonally relevant”, and that the brand is also seeking to expand in areas like health and beauty, wellness and pet care.

“It isn’t just the space that we’ve changed, we’ve also invested a lot in the underlying technology” around the shopfloor, he adds.

This includes a digital queuing system to its 298 store portfolio, allowing colleagues to process customer orders and better manage their wait time expectations to speak to a sales associate.

Currys rolled out headsets to all of its UK and Ireland stores last month and has introduced electronic shelf edge labels to 100 of its stores.

“We’re improving things for customers but also for our colleagues to unlock their time and ability to serve customers more effectively, and to connect to each other and feel safe,” says Speight.

Speight says the retailer has been seeing a “good performance” from its store upgrades, both from an “in-store and omnichannel perspective”.

Its peak trading update, covering the 10 weeks to 4 January, Currys reported that omnichannel sales were growing strongly driven by a 24% boost in online in-store orders.

In terms of more store upgrades on the way, Speight says that Currys is “continuing to explore what’s next for us,” and has a store relocation in Cambridge coming up next year.

“Once we’ve delivered that, we’ll then probably look to roll out another phase of space optimisation,” he says.

Cracking down on retail crime

Currys’ investment into its stores also includes an increased spend on security measures to protect staff amid the rise in retail crime, which has skyrocketed over the last 12 months.

The British Retail Consortium reported that shoplifting and violence against retail staff was at “record levels”, with over 2,000 incidents occurring daily in UK shops.

Speight shares that its been a “tough year” for Currys, adding that the business “saw a rapid increase in aggressive theft that peaked in the summer”.

“Since then, in the last two months of our financial year, we’ve seen a 58% reduction and that’s a good sign that coincides with a lot of activity.” 

Speight explains Currys has done “a lot of work to protect the products” by utilising tools such as “CCTV, headsets, stronger laptop clamps, cabinet alarms, and mobile reporting apps”.

The retailer made its “largest ever” safety investment to tackle retail crime in April, which saw increased spending on security personnel and surveillance, public display monitors upgraded in high-risk stores and enhanced product security.

“The most important people in our business are our front line colleagues, and when you read and see and talk and listen to our colleagues in the stores and you hear some of the examples they’ve got to put up with it’s simply not good enough,” says Speight.

“Physical and verbal abuse, there’s no place for it. I think we fundamentally recognised an opportunity to be stronger and better for our colleagues, so we’ve done quite a lot in the last 12 months and there’s a lot more for us to do.”

Currys has now rolled out retail crime platform Auror to all of its stores following a trial in two regions earlier this year which results in 10 repeat offenders being caught, three arrests, and prevented the theft of “nearly £25,000 worth of kit.”

Speight explains that the platform “helps us speed up and connect better with local police and response units so that our colleagues will very quickly be able to get the responses they need”.

In some of Currys’ biggest stores, Speight notes the retailer has also decided to close its second door, meaning they have a “single access one in one out” system for shoppers.

Though Speight explains the business has had to be mindful of how it boosts security in its stores while not impacting the consumer experience too much.

“Most customers want to come into our stores as a showroom for electronics,” he notes.

“They want to see, they want to touch, they want to try the technology, so it’s a real fine balance between locking it all down and having it all in the warehouse like Argos versus our environment.”

Investing ‘more than ever’ in staff development

As well as the physical and technical upgrades to its estate, Speight says Currys is investing “more now than it ever has” in its retail staff.

“If I go back to the principles that we’re aiming for, to make sure we’ve got the very best talent at the top of its game, highly engaged, working as one business, and living our vision and values, we have to walk the talk,” he says.

“To have expert colleagues – that’s not going to happen by chance. You’ve got to dedicate time and focus and create an environment where that’s possible and ultimately inevitable.”

Speight explains that Currys runs a supplier education scheme where staff are “allocated training by brands” to enable them to grow their expertise, with a focus on “major domestic appliance products, white label goods or TVs”.

He says the retailer has also significantly ramped up its level of “face-to-face training” post-Covid – be it computing academies, training with sales managers, or the business running its first academy for Currys 300 general managers in a decade in September last year. The retailer will roll out similar academies for sales managers and aspiring managers in the coming months.

Currys invested £8m into boosting the hourly pay for more than 20,000 store-based colleagues earlier this year, as well as increasing its bonus programme to up to £3,000 per year.

The executive also insists that Currys is standing firm with its flexible working policy – which includes adaptable shift patterns for retail and distribution staff – despite the National Insurance rise from last month making it more expensive to hire part time roles.

“There’s a brave new world that means you don’t have to have full time managers. Part time managers, job shares, they exist across our estate,” he says.

“Getting that balance so it’s right for the individual, right for the customer and right for Currys is where the sweet spot is.”  

With its store upgrades and crime prevention measures starting to pay off, the future looks bright for the electricals retailer.

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