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You and Yours: Retail jobs; Ikea problems; Soft play

02/09/2020

Retail jobs; Ikea problems; Soft play

BBC Radio 4 - You and Yours, Retail jobs; Ikea problems; Soft play

A new report released exclusively to You and Yours shows the effects of job losses in retail on women and people under 30. And why are Ikea customers sleeping on the floor?

Thousands of jobs have been lost in retail since the start of Coronavirus and with furlough due to end soon, more could be at risk. It's a sector whose workforce is populated in the main by women and people under 30. Today a new report released exclusively to You and Yours details the effect of unemployment on those groups and shows why the new jobs being created in the retail landscape - warehouse work - might not be something they can easily move in to.

Customer service was one of the biggest casualties of the early weeks and months of lockdown. Companies scrambling to adapt to new ways of working found they were caught out by a combination of high demand and reduced staffing in call centres. For many customers it meant a long wait on the phone or worse, an unsatisfactory interaction with an automated 'chatbot'. There was early goodwill, but five and a half months on and customers are a little less forgiving. We hear from the Ikea customers left sleeping on the floor because part of their order is missing and they can't get through to the company to complain.

And soft play centres were  among the last things to reopen after lockdown was eased. But how do you keep a business like that running with social distancing rules in place? We revisit a soft play centre in Warrington that's staying viable despite restrictions on the numbers of people allowed in.

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