Who are Iceland
Iceland is a frozen food specialist retail store that was first established in 1970 by Malcolm Walker. The company has now branched out to over 880 stores throughout the United Kingdom and a further 40 more as far as Europe. Starting off as a unique single frozen food store, they have now opened up store concepts called The Food Warehouse where customers can enjoy the normal Iceland experience with the option of luxurious and bulk options.
Job Roles and Employees
Throughout the Iceland company there are approximately 22,000 employees. This branches from those in corporate and head office to people on the frontline in store. I fit into the category of frontline staff where I directly deal with the public daily. As a frontline employee over the two years I have been with Iceland I have played many roles in the store from operating the checkouts, running stock and deliveries, acting as an online delivery picker and even cleaning. By being involved in these different types of jobs in the store I feel that I have been able to gain more experience on what Iceland is about as a company and what they want from each employee.
Below I have added a list of weekly hours that I completed whilst I was on my industrial placement in Iceland frozen foods.
A benefit that comes from being an employee of Iceland is the pay rate everyone receives. Each employee in the company is paid over the national living wage, no matter of your age or experience. I feel this is a strong point of Iceland and one of the reasons they are an excellent company to work for. This brings me to my next point of who Iceland employ. When you come into a typical Iceland store, there will not be one particular age group that stands out more than another. Iceland strive to make their stores an enjoyable place to work and shop in. As a company, Iceland sell a large majority of their own brand food and grocery items but also have a lot of big brands sold in store too. When it comes to their own brand, there are items that are sold at the cheaper end of the scale but also others that are targeted at people with a more acquired taste and larger budget. By providing both own brand and big brands in store, it allows shoppers to have a wider variety but also increases sales for the big brands. Over the past two years, Iceland have suffered from a fall in sales, falling from close to £200 million in 2012 to £120 million in 2016. This is due to customers going elsewhere, such as Lidl and Aldi. This caused Iceland to rethink their strategy and fall back to the basics and rethink on what the customers want and look for in a store. This had a great impact on the stores and the employees as it meant hours had to be reduced to compensate.In 2014 Iceland was voted as the best big company to work for by the Sunday times. On this same year they also won most improved big company. The staff at Iceland would describe working at Iceland as being part of a family. Iceland, (n.d.) have stated that “the key to success in retailing is looking after customers” but feel that in order to do this that staff should “start with looking after each other.” Iceland claimed the award of best big company due to its benefits and giving nature to both their customers and staff. Iceland award their staff member with pay increases most years, when in October 2015 and April 2016 it increased. Staff members of the company have the opportunity to develop their skills and place in the company.
Each year staff in Iceland are required to complete a straight talk survey for their store and experience in the store/company. Each store has a talking shop representative that visits conferences that address any changes to the store, but they also act as a support for employees to fall back on if they have a problem. By doing this, if there is staff problem with another member, if it can be resolved through the talking shop representative then it frees more time for the senior staff members. Iceland pride themselves in being a company that is constantly trying to reduce their carbon footprint and general waste in order to improve the environment.
In order for Iceland to work on reducing their carbon footprint, over the years they have been installing and using new equipment in their frontline stores. These types of new technology allow the stores to se minimum power when needed. For example, the lights in the stores are not on full power during closing times but when employees are in. instead they are set on timers that activate and deactivate ten minutes before and after the store opens. The same idea works with the refrigeration and freezer technology. Iceland do a number of things throughout the company stores to reduce their waste. For a start, a key advantage of being a frozen food store is that there is immediately less fuss and mess when it comes to waste. Iceland also have a policy that requires them to use minimal packaging on their own brand food. In addition to this, Iceland makes the process of recycling easier for their customers by making 85% of their packing used recyclable. Below I have added a diagram of they key factors Iceland feel they benefit from being a frozen food company. These factors include things such as waste, freshness and convenience.In relation to the themes we have been covering at university this year, Iceland in ways have a lot of technology in their stores that they rely on through a daily basis. For example, we have hand held terminals that allow the staff members to create product lists for stock and do data checks with stock numbers that would have been more difficult to d so without the use of technology. The hand held terminals are also used as a basis to generate and pick online deliveries for customers. This is something that we rely on daily in order to complete the tasks efficiently and quickly.
On the other side of the spectrum with technology, I feel that my particular Iceland store would benefit more from better checkout systems, maybe advancing and making a step towards self scan systems. There are many reasons as to why Iceland have not turned to self scan checkouts yet. Although there are many advantages to the technological systems such as a reduced cost of employees and a faster shopping experience. There are also many disadvantages which may cause stores like Iceland to steer away from them. Some of the disadvantages that may be general to some stores who are not large franchises would be that it is very costly for an installation of these systems. One disadvantage that occurs due to ethical reasons is that it drastically reduces human interaction. For some people this may not be a problem, but other such as an elderly person who has little or no family, the checkout operator may be the only person they get to interact with that day. Another key point to make is that Iceland through the years have been stripping their knowledge and core skills back to basics, thinking about the customers needs, wants and experiences. So by implementing new self scan checkouts, would this really be beneficial to the company? Probably not. This is backed up by Iceland’s business policy and core values of serious about staff, serious about service and serious about standards.
Iceland was the first food retail stores to introduce a home delivery system where customers can buy now and receive later. This has now developed further with including an online shopping service too. This type of service allows the customers to shop at the ease of home or work when suits them but also creates an ethical conflict as again minimal human interaction is required for this process.
Reflection and Connections to Classroom
Reflecting back on my industrial placement I feel I have learnt far more about Iceland as a company and how they operate and think as a company. By taking my reflections on how this placement developed and how my previous school placements have been I feel that I would be more comfortable to take a class of any level and teach them about sustainability and technological themes. I have learnt more about the importance of sustainability or more specific the factors that contribute to the theme of sustainability. By using my now broadened knowledge on waste management and the importance behind that regarding the impact on the environment I feel I could effectively base a series of lessons for my pupils to gain more insight and understanding into how important these factors are.
Another factor I could tie into lessons within the curricular area of design and manufacture would be to think about packaging and how it would be manufactured. This would tie into a fourth year level class that would be studying materials and manufacture at this time. This could then lead into a series of lessons again tying to the environment, or even social and economical themes. The pupils could think about how easy it is to recycle the materials, or the jobs and people that would be used to manufacture the packaging.