Asda is to put more staff on checkouts in a scramble to win back market share, after admitting the expansion of self-service technology had reached its limit.
The supermarket is spending £30m on increasing staff hours as it battles to stem falling sales.
This includes increasing the hours in which staff will work on manned checkouts as part of a broader push to make its supermarkets more appealing.
Michael Gleeson, Asda’s chief financial officer, said: “I think we have reached a level of self checkouts and scan and go where we feel that works best for our customers, and we feel we’ve got the balance just about right.
“We have invested additional hours in manned checkouts and that’s been within the existing physical infrastructure [of the stores]. It’s not more checkouts, it’s more colleagues on checkouts.”
It follows a broader backlash against self-checkouts from customers who have argued that a reliance on the technology is ruining the shopping experience.
Some supermarkets have gone as far as ditching self-checkouts. The upmarket grocer Booths last year replaced self-checkout machines with human cashiers in all but two of its 27 stores.
Ken Murphy, chief executive of Tesco, was forced to defend its use of self-checkouts after an outcry from customers last year.
He said: “We genuinely believe, at the end of the day, it provides a better customer experience.”
Asda will also invest in making stores cleaner and improving the availability of products across its estate. Some sites will take on extra staff to achieve this, while others will boost the hours given to existing workers.
It comes after Asda’s share of the grocery market dropped from 13.7pc at the start of 2024 to 12.7pc in July, according to Kantar.
On Thursday Asda posted a 2pc increase in revenues during the first six months of 2024, but said like-for-like sales fell 2.1pc compared with a year earlier.
Mr Gleeson pointed to recent efforts to bring down prices for shoppers, including the introduction of an Aldi and Lidl price match scheme earlier this year, while investing £70m in lowering prices.
At the same time, bosses have been working to disentangle its IT systems inherited from its former owner Walmart.
It was bought by the billionaire Issa brothers Mohsin and Zuber Issa and private equity firm TDR Capital for £6.8bn in 2021.
Mr Gleeson said: “We have achieved a huge amount in the first half of the year – it’s not been without its bumps along the way.
“I think it’s right to make sure that as we face into the second half of the year and the completion of that programme, that we invest in stores, invest in replenishment, to ensure we maintain and improve availability going into that important period in the lead into Christmas.”
He added that recent issues with Asda’s payroll system, which saw around 10,000 workers receive incorrect payslips, had now been fixed.
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