Next’s pay incentive to stay at work

High street fashion chain Next offered staff a 20 per cent boost to their pay to turn up to stores yesterday despite government warnings to stay home.

The retailer asked workers to travel to shuttered sites and pick clothes for online orders “to keep the company operating”, according to a letter made public.

But worried staff questioned whether picking clothes was an “essential” job at the same time the government called for all non-essential workers to temporarily avoid unnecessary travel. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday night the public “must stay at home” unless they worked in a key sector or industry.

This included some shops such as grocers, pharmacies, pet shops, bicycle shops and hardware stores, among others.

But retailers could still trade online, with the government now under pressure to intervene to end the confusion about which businesses could continue to operate.

A letter sent to Next employees on Tuesday evening said: “We need to keep the online business functioning to be certain that Next emerges from this short-term crisis.

“To help us, we are looking for a small number of staff to attend work to pick and process the stock in our stores that customers have purchased online and keep the online business going. We will only look to achieve this on a voluntary basis.”

Bosses also laid out a series of measures to ensure social distancing and a clean work space, including limits on the number of people in each store and rules that items were only touched by one person.

The letter said: “We fully understand that many of you have great concerns about attending work. Please let me reassure you that we are in no circumstances going to ask anyone who is unsure about coming to work to do so.”