About

Team size: 52 comprising legal, company secretariat, financial services compliance, business standards and risk management and insurance

Major legal advisers (United Kingdom): Addleshaw Goddard, Bristows, Clyde & Co, DAC Beachcroft, DLA Piper, Doyle Clayton, DWF, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Pinsent Masons, Shoosmiths

What were the main difficulties your company faced during the initial Covid-19 lockdown?

Dixons Carphone is one of Europe’s leading omnichannel electrical and mobile phone retailers operating through 989 stores in the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, Greece and the Nordics. In March 2020, as a result of the onset of Covid-19, 523 stores were required to close in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Greece (the cumulative impact of all the closures equates to at least £320m of lost sales) and we had to radically transform our business in these countries to be an online-only retailer, whilst in the Nordics adapting our stores to implement social distancing and new hygiene standards.

In this first phrase of lockdown, where our stores were closed, we changed our strategy to focus solely on three “Big Priorities”. These were keeping colleagues and customers safe, helping our customers and securing our future.

To keep colleagues safe, we altered ways of working across all our operations to ensure the highest standards of health and safety were adhered to, for example, by providing PPE, altering shift patterns to avoid congestion and by enabling remote access working for all our UK contact centres and offices.

To ensure help was going to the customers who were most in need, we also established a new charity partnership with Aged UK in March 2020, acting together to provide vital tech support to vulnerable older people. Our mobile company iD Mobile offered all existing customers over 70 years old free and unlimited data for the initial twelve-week isolation period. We prioritised requests for tablets, mobiles, laptops, headsets and webcams for all NHS Trusts and individual hospitals to meet critical patient and medical practitioner requirements for connectivity.

We helped to secure our future with an additional £266m Revolving Credit Facility to give us the financial cushion to weather impact of the pandemic. We took rigorous measures to control discretionary spend, reduce capex and to protect working capital. No dividend was paid in FY 19/20.

We also furloughed approximately 30% of our head office teams as well as most of our store colleagues in the closed stores, in just over 16,500 colleagues. The Executive Committee and the Board took a 20% pay cut and senior leaders 10% during this period.

At the same time as stores closing for the first lockdown we faced a significant surge of activity to the company’s online channels which put particular pressures on our warehouse distribution system and contact centres, the latter of which had moved to home working, in particular at a time when colleague availability was constrained due to the pandemic. Online sales in April 2020 for example increased 166%, a trend which continued with a 114% increase in the six months to 31 October 2020.

Protecting the business has often meant companies having to make tough decisions. How were you able to assist the employees of the company get through the difficult period of the first lockdown?

Of the ‘Big Three Priorities’ we identified “keeping colleagues and customers safe” was emphasised as the foremost priority in all corporate communications. To give reassurance, we also announced that no colleague would be required to do any work which made them feel uncomfortable.

In addition to the multiplicity of physical health and safety measures put in place, we have placed considerable emphasis on colleague well-being throughout the pandemic as we could see from, amongst other feedback, our colleague engagement surveys that lockdown was tough for many colleagues. We set up a ‘Well Being Corner’, an online portal with content framed around four wellbeing pillars – Mental, Physical, Environmental and Social – to help support colleagues with their own wellbeing, and the wellbeing of their teams – from podcasts, to inspiring videos, to links to benefits that we have at our fingertips.

To complement the hub – we have the Wellbeing Corner Workplace Group – set up for colleagues to share their Wellbeing activities and ideas. We also set up a network of ‘Mental Health First Aiders’ in each team to provide local support to colleagues. For Christmas 2020 all colleagues received a six-month subscription to the meditation app, Calm.

We have instituted a company-wide meeting and call free ‘golden hour’ between 1-2pm each day and on Wednesday morning to ensure colleagues were getting the downtime needed. At a local team level in the legal, governance and risk (LGR) team we ensured that there were frequent daily touchpoints with everyone in the team to ensure we stayed connected via team quizzes, virtual tea breaks and drinks.

How has your company/legal department handled the many challenges presented to brick-and-mortar trading to the extent that you’ve been able to keep stores open and the business afloat in such a precarious time?

LGR played a key role in the Covid-19 response from December 2019 onwards. The Covid-19 Steering Committee co-ordinating the company’s preparations was at the beginning of the pandemic chaired by the general counsel, before handing responsibility to the CEO when the response to the threat became the entire focus of the business focus. The head of risk, part of the LGR team, chaired the crisis management team, which included putting in place business continuity plans covering each of the group’s key operations and working with the group’s health and safety team to ensure safe ways of working in the areas of operations permitted by regulation to continue.

The legal team provided ongoing advice on the interpretation of ever-changing government guidance across the four countries of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. After the first lockdown click and collect services were permitted and we advised on how the services could be implemented compliantly. Likewise, with innovations, such as ‘Shop Live’ legal both negotiated the technology contract with Sym-Sys Ltd in addition to advising on the safe operation of selling via video link.

2020 was a period of significant ongoing transformation of the Group’s operations, in particular in IT infrastructure and contact centres.

The £266m Revolving Credit Facility was negotiated in short order at the beginning of the pandemic in April 2020 to ensure the Group’s financial stability again showed the team responding the needs of the business.

The restructuring of the company’s operations under the ongoing Future Organisation programme had the LGR’s employment lawyers at its heart as did the implementation of the UK Government’s furlough scheme. Finally, planning for Brexit was another key programme in 2020 lead out of the LGR team.