Move of the Month 2/15

Dixons Carphone (still holding out hope for a carphone revival) has appointed Jenny Davidson as its new Group Reward Director.

Dixons Carphone, which also includes Currys and PC World, had a decent 2014 in the UK, though the European wing of its operations was a big loser for the company. Christmas was a ‘roller-coaster’, but more profitable than forecast – their Black Friday initiative was a big success and looks set to remain on our calendars.

As GRD, Davidson will be looking after the pay and benefits packages given to staff, which naturally puts her in control of the bonuses staff get paid for selling you warranties. (PC World apparently pays 20% commission on warranty sales.) We hope she’ll put some brakes on some of those policies, as allegedly some of its sales staff have taken to moving in packs and staring hungrily at passers-by from shop windows.

There’s a long road ahead for Dixons Carphone to escape the reputational black hole of certain aspects of its business, which rate consistently poorly on Which? surveys into high street and online shopping experiences. That PC World was memorably pranked in 2014, presumably by a disgruntled customer, only serves to reinforce that impression.

Jenny Davidson was previously at TalkTalk, where she oversaw an impressive increase in employee engagement during her eleven month tenure. She moved there from running her own rewards consultancy agency, Reward Innovation, so she knows a thing or two about giving people what they deserve. We wish her the best of luck in her new role.

About the author

Jerome Langford

Jerome is a graduate in Philosophy from St Andrews, who alternately spends time writing about HR and staring wistfully out of windows, thinking about life’s bigger questions: Why are we here? How much lunch is too much lunch? What do you mean exactly by ‘final warning’?