COVID Catch-up A meety undertaking
Shoprite have – get your head around this – around 2,400 scheduled virtual meetings every day and since lockdown started, have tallied a total of 135,874 informal online meetings. Within three days of lockdown, they had 2,000 staff working offsite; currently 3,700 staff dial in to meetings virtually, with all that this means for their IT and cyber-security infrastructure. Pick n Pay, concerned by the impact of the rising price of staples on their shoppers, have put aside R500m this year to keep prices of essentials and basic foods, including various commodity lines, at an affordable level. SPAR have sadly taken the decision to cancel their entire six-race series of the SPAR Women’s Challenge, an iconic highlight of the local road-running calendar. They’ll be back with a bang next year, though. “SPAR plans to celebrate the country’s return to competitive and social road running in a big way,” says Group Marketing Executive Mike Prentice. “We owe it to both our elite runners and the tens of thousands of women who turn up to run and walk the 5km and 10km events faithfully each year.”
Comment: Here’s a new one out of the Shoprite playbook: take your operating profit, divide it by your now exactly-measurable number of meetings, then plan your new efficiency drive accordingly.