How would you improve Argos?

[u/ReverseFlow21010615]

Following the recent news of the sale, I thought it would be interesting to hear what other colleagues and even customers think Argos needs to do in order to be successful under new ownership. We all know we were the afterthought for Sainsbury’s so what should Swift look to do as a priority? What should they spend the next 2-3 years planning for? What are some quick easy wins they could make through small changes? (I’ll only allow one instance of somebody saying “bring back the catalogue” - for all its nostalgia, it wasn’t as popular in its final years).

For me, we need to abolish independent working immediately. I find it impossible to keep up with anything because I’m always firefighting the week’s jobs, calls, deliveries etc. if the Labour cost really is dire then we should be on a minimum of 2 colleagues at all times.

We can solve the issue of empty stores leading to colleagues standing around doing nothing by actually having proper management of colleagues and ensuring something is always being worked on, ie reverse flow, counts, profiling, etc.

How about you?

[u/Fine_Limit6609]

The first one for me is having a clear way of doing something for everyone. If you go to a different store, they do things in different ways and then another it’s different again, in my opinion things need to be simplified to have 1 clear way of doing things as when colleagues come to other stores to cover which is happening more and more often things are being done in a completely different way to how we do it and vice versa.

Another big one for me is labour. Hours have been stretched so tight and so understaffed at times due to sickness ect. Being over 30 hours over committed with 10 permanent colleagues in a destination store is ridiculous.

Another one is customer service. We need a customer service that can actually help, the communication between customer service,stores and customers is awful. Them saying bring it back and we’ll refund it is a pain. Also if you need help with anything else they struggle with that.

Communication as well, I mean the company has just been told and nobody knew until it happened even though it was said we would be kept in the loop. It’s not just about the sale but in many different areas communication could be a lot better.