Recruitment and training from 1950
The new self-service supermarkets of the 1950s created lots of new jobs. For the first time there was a division between shop floor and backroom jobs, and people were employed specifically to package, weigh and price goods before they were brought out into the shop.
On the shop floor, staff were employed as checkout operators and ‘gondola girls’ (filling the shelving units known as ‘gondolas’). These roles placed greater emphasis on customer service than on grocery and provisions trade skills.
Many of the new jobs were also part time opportunities, undertaken by married women. Large self-service branches employed twice as many women as men. By 1965 female personnel officers were appointed with responsibility for the pastoral care of these staff.
Sainsbury’s has continued to provide high quality training and a wide range of employment opportunities. In 1974 an apprenticeship scheme was established for colleagues in Sainsbury’s new in-store bakeries. A new, GNVQ-recognised bakery scheme was launched in 2006, to address the problem of falling numbers of trained bakers in the UK. In the same year Sainsbury’s began a partnership with Mencap Workright to support people with learning disabilities to achieve permanent employment.