Officials at Goodwill Industries of Denver said Tuesday night the company is undergoing a restructuring, but denied that jobs would be cut as a result.
“Everyone who has a job at Goodwill and who wants to continue to have a job will be offered a position…anyone who’s not in a retail leadership position won’t be affected by this,” said spokeswoman Vanessa Clark.
Clark said the restructuring will affect about 200 employees who work in the company’s 27 metro area retail stores, along with a boutique and home store run by the company.
Clark said many of those affected will be told of the restructuring on Wednesday, added it was unclear when the process would be completed.
The rationale behind the restructuring is twofold, Clark said. Six months of internal research and corporate surveys showed that the managers of those stores felt they were overburdened, not only by the day-to-day operation of the stores but also by their roles in Goodwill’s community responsibilities. Clark said the store served more than 22,000 Coloradans in that capacity last year.
As a result, Clark said, a decision was made to effectively split the work into two positions. A manager will run each store while the newly-created second position will be responsible for work in the community.
“Many of the people who are reapplying will be getting promotions,” Clark said. “At the end of the day, we’ll be employing more people.”
Clark said Goodwill will also depart from previous policy by hiring part-time workers.
Asked whether there would be pay cuts, Clark said she had no knowledge of the pending pay structure.. She said did say the changes were part of Goodwill adapting its business model to a “changing retail climate.”
“We want to serve as many people here as we can and our biggest funding model is the retail stores,” she said. “The idea is to continue to serve them and hopefully thousands more.”
Anthony Cotton: 303-954-1292, acotton@denverpost.com or
