Regional managers at Hays Travel will continue to visit shops at weekends to engage with staff.
A Saturday rota for regional managers was set up as Hays Travel shops reopened after the pandemic, and has been kept in place so managers can see how their staff are coping on the busiest day of the week.
Speaking on a panel at the Jet2holidays annual conference, managing director Don Bircham (pictured right) said: “It always baffled me that regional managers would work from Monday to Friday and then be sat with their feet up on the weekends.
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“We introduced a roster during Covid for regional managers to work one Saturday in every five or six so they could get in the car and drive around the shops to see how staff are getting on during their busiest day.
“It was daft we weren’t doing that before and we are going to continue to do it now.”
Bircham was then questioned on whether a hybrid working model could become the norm for retail staff, to which he replied he did not want to compromise on customer care.
“We have to be careful we don’t compromise too much – if one person says they don’t want to work on Saturdays, we can’t say it’s fine for them not to work weekends and still ask everyone else to work.
“A total of 43% of our staff don’t work full time so we understand the importance of a work-life balance and we try to accommodate that as much as possible.
“However, we are a retail business and Saturdays are our biggest day so I have to stand firm on that.”