Supermarket giant Coles is offshoring several hundred jobs to India through a partnership with management consultants Accenture, citing an “increasingly competitive” retail sector.

It is claiming that the program will strengthen technological and specialist capabilities to “continue supporting the business” in the wake of changing customer expectations. Coles admitted that the multi-year partnership with Accenture will also reduce the cost of backroom operations.

Already the second-largest supermarket retailer in Australia, Coles told Inside Retail that “some work in our corporate workforce will move to Accenture overseas”.

“We recognise the impact this has on individuals and our wider team, and these decisions are never made lightly,” a company spokesperson added. “We will redeploy as many affected team members as possible, including reskilling opportunities and pathways into other roles across Coles.”

The statement comes in response to news broken by The Australian Financial Review ahead of its planned announcement. That title reported 1000 roles would be offshored. Accenture has already begun advertising jobs for the program, based in Mumbai.

One such job is looking for a marketing campaign management specialist with seven to 11 years’ experience. The listing described the role’s opportunity to work with “Coles 360 teams on cross-functional campaigns”. No salary or pay scale is included on the advertisement.

“It’s important to note that the changes affect a very small portion of the 115,000 Australians that Coles employs, and does not impact the vast majority of our team who work in-store, in communities across the country,” Coles added. 

The retailer maintained that any jobs lost to the offshoring deal would be made up through its ongoing store expansion program. Those affected by the Accenture deal may be redeployed elsewhere in the Coles Group, but the spokesperson conceded that there will be redundancies.