John Lewis Partnership, the parent company of Waitrose, has warned it will start disciplinary action against employees writing “abusive, hurtful and simply unacceptable” messages on its intranet.
The announcement was made after a series of abusive comments were published on its internal forum, with the company adding that employees writing such messages would be called into meetings with people managers, reported The Telegraph.
The John Lewis Partnership said: “[there was a] significant and understandable strength of feeling about recent announcements but that’s not an excuse for some of the abuse we’ve seen”.
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It called the comments on its intranet, “abusive, hurtful and simply unacceptable”, while chairman Dame Sharon White added: “The intranet is not a social media platform. It’s a business channel and should be treated as such by every partner.”
The news comes as workers across Waitrose and John Lewis brace themselves for company wide job cuts, after it emerged that the employee-owned retailer could slash as many as 11,000 jobs.
It follows a series of recent decisions impacting workers, including the Waitrose owner halving redundancy payouts and warning staff of smaller pay rises amid a salary “reset”.
Last month, White claimed that the businesses is now is on back on track to “build back to sustainable profit” and will “more than break-even” this year, following a loss of £234m last year.
