Do layoffs actually fix a retail or grocery business, and if not, what should CEOs and CHROs do instead?
Short answer: layoffs are a receipt, not a strategy. The work is an operating redesign that protects trust, talent, and the promise customers feel at the shelf and on the app.
The moment: Amazon and Target put layoffs back on the front page
Amazon
On 28 October 2025 Amazon confirmed plans to cut about 14,000 corporate jobs, with multiple outlets reporting that as many as 30,000 roles are at risk across HR, devices, services, and operations. The company is framing the move as simplification and a shift of investment into artificial intelligence. At the same time Amazon plans to hire roughly 250,000 seasonal workers for the holidays. The headline reads as efficiency. The reality inside teams is dislocation and morale risk, particularly where institutional memory and connective tissue live.
What this signals for leaders
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AI is becoming the alibi as well as the accelerant. If the real goal is margin, say margin. If it is speed, show the design. Do not hide headcount math behind novelty.
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Do not indiscriminately remove so called middle layers. That connective tissue keeps customers served and teams sane. Efficiency without humanity creates fragility.
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Treat jobs as a privilege to steward. If technology unlocks productivity, share gains and do not only socialize losses.
Target
Target announced corporate reductions positioned as simplification after walking back several promises that shaped trust. The sequence matters. Walk back values, then credibility weakens, then the P and L slows, then people are cut. That is not org design. That is a bill coming due.
Why values show up in the P&L
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Cut DEI and you cut perspective. Fewer voices at the table mean weaker decisions, slower course correction, and missed cultural moments.
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Cut price promise and you cut credibility. In a high friction economy, customers must feel protected. Remove that protection and you push an impossible burden onto merchandising and store operations.
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Cut people and you cut momentum. Morale sinks, decision cycles lengthen, and stores carry more weight with fewer hands and cloudy direction.
Bottom line: layoffs are not a strategy. They are a receipt.
What to do instead: the 90 day operating sequence
Day 0 to 30 | Truth and triage
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Publish a plain English scorecard that includes availability, pickup and delivery wait times, defect rates, price perception, and unit economics.
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Name three non negotiables that will guide every decision.
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Freeze pet projects that do not serve those non negotiables.
Day 30 to 60 | Fund the floor
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Redirect 10 to 15 percent of HQ opex to stores and digital operations.
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Raise hours in the highest variance districts.
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Fix the top 20 defects by volume: out of stocks, returns, substitutions, guest recovery credits.
Day 60 to 90 | Re earn the promise
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Pilot a Fair Price Guarantee in ten markets that combines transparent everyday pricing with a clear substitution policy.
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Stand up a Belonging Operations Council that links Category, HR, and Store Operations so inclusion is instrumented into product and promotion decisions.
What great looks like by spring
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Merchandising: plus 200 basis points full price sell through in three hero categories, with fewer long tail misses.
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Operations: on shelf availability plus 250 basis points, pickup wait times down 20 percent, digital NPS plus 5.
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Trust: price perception plus 3, guest recovery within 24 hours 95 percent of the time.
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People: frontline engagement plus 5, promotion velocity for under represented talent plus 10 percent.
Leadership specs that actually move the needle
Invest and invest well. Build a bench you can rely on.
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Chief Merchant or GM, Everyday Value. A proven private label builder who connects price transparency with attachment.
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SVP, Store and Community Operations. A district up operator who measures success in neighbor delight as well as EBITDA.
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Chief Belonging and Business Outcomes Officer. Not a comms role. This is an operator who ties inclusion to decisions, data, and dollars.
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Head of Resilience and Continuity. Budget authority across digital, stores, and supply chain, with tested runbooks and offline capability. Reliability should be rewarded, not just feature velocity.
The operating system to install
Principles
- Instrument values. Build inclusion into how you buy, schedule, promote, and recover service. Report it like inventory turns.
- Fund where it compounds. Dollars go to the frontline first, then to tech that removes friction. HQ wants come last.
- Bias to ship and learn. Visible pilots with clear guardrails beat slideware.
- Narrate the climb. Radical transparency creates trust equity that carries you through misses.
FAQ for CEOs and CHROs
Q: Will layoffs improve margin fast enough to justify the cultural damage A: Short term margin can improve, but unless you redesign the work and the promise you will pay it back in slower growth, higher attrition, and weaker execution.
Q: How do we make DEI operational rather than performative A: Instrument inclusion into assortment, scheduling, service recovery, and promotion velocity. Report it alongside NPS and availability. Tie leader bonuses to movement and publish the metrics internally every month.
Q: What roles should we prioritize in a 12 month retail turnaround A: A value oriented Chief Merchant or GM, a district honed SVP Store and Community Operations, a Chief Belonging and Business Outcomes Officer, and a Head of Resilience and Continuity.
Q: How do we protect stores during cloud or vendor outages while we are cutting elsewhere A: Maintain offline capable POS with cached prices and queued transactions, a read only identity cache, dual DNS and multi CDN, tested runbooks, and contracts that guarantee portability and observability.
About DeBerry Search Associates
We help retail and consumer leaders turn efficiency drives into intelligent redesign. When new capability is needed, we deliver values led searches for AI fluent, customer obsessed operators who scale performance without breaking culture. If this touches your 2026 plan, let us align your leadership bench and operating system now.