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April 4, 2008
Home Depot Inc., the largest home- improvement retailer, may cut as many as 1,000 jobs as it reduces human-resources departments in stores by half to shift more workers to the sales floor.
About 2,200 workers were notified of possible changes, and affected full-time employees, less than 1 percent of its workforce, can apply for other jobs at the Atlanta-based company, spokesman Ron DeFeo said today in an interview. The job cuts are effective May 1. The shares fell 1.5 percent.
Since taking over in January 2007, Chief Executive OfficerFrank Blake has sold HD Supply, the retailer's wholesale commercial-builder unit, and closed the landscape and floor outlets to focus on retail stores, where customer service has suffered. Home Depot has lost market share to Lowe's Cos.
The job cuts are Home Depot's second this year after the retailer announced in January that it would reduce staff at its Atlanta headquarters by 10 percent.
Home Depot fell 43 cents to $28.79 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares gained 6.9 percent this year after three straight annual declines.
The new human-resources structure will be about half the current size, DeFeo said. The change will assign human-resources workers to a district covering six to 10 locations, rather than one store, he said. Home Depot also will add a 200-person call center in Atlanta to handle some departmental tasks.
The retailer employs about 331,000 people, two-thirds of them full-time. In January, Home Depot said it cut 500 jobs at headquarters, citing a ``tough business environment.''
Shoppers trimmed purchases as gasoline prices climbed to $3 a gallon and their home values declined amid the worst U.S. housing slump in a quarter century. Home Depot has 1,970 stores in the country and 2,255 overall, with locations in Mexico, Canada and China.
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