Shake-up in Aisle 21: Disruption, change and opportunity in Ontario’s grocery sector is a new report from the Brookfield Institute examining the changing nature of the food retail sector. It draws on interviews with workers in the industry as well as insights from news reports and publications in order to explore the trends apparent in food shopping as a consumer activity in Ontario.
While many of these trends were already underway prior, the COVID-19 pandemic has certainly accelerated many and forced the industry to adapt to monumental changes in a very short amount of time. These include:
- The rise of e-commerce
- Driving loyalty with data
- Growing market power and consolidation
- Beyond hyper-efficient supply chains
- Demand for flexible, customer service oriented employees
- Creation of new e-commerce positions and demand for employees to fill them
- Shift to part-time evening and weekend work
- Decline in quality of grocery jobs
- Slow and uneven adoption of digital recruitment and talent tracking tools
The report highlights a few key takeaways:
- The food retail industry — by virtue of its scale and conditions — can be a powerhouse for innovation.
- The food retail industry employs hundreds of thousands of essential workers in Canada, yet many food retail jobs offer poor conditions — low pay, insufficient hours or precarious employment, and tend to see high turnover.
- Companies tend to be behind the times when it comes to managing the skills, talent, and expertise of people already on their payroll.
- Customer service skills are critically important and highly sought after by employers but remain poorly codified and not economically valued.
- As the sector changes, some workers may face disruption. Workers in this sector may consider transitions, either for new opportunities or as a result of job-related disruption.
