By Mark Kleinman, City Editor
The new chief executive of Tesco has ordered thousands of head office staff to descend on stores in a pre-Christmas blitz aimed at restoring morale amid the grocer's £250m accounting crisis.
Sky News has learnt that Dave Lewis emailed staff at Tesco's headquarters and other corporate offices on Tuesday to inform them about an initiative that will include the company's top executives.
The programme, called 'Feet on the Floor' will require more than 4,000 employees to work one day every fortnight in a store selected from a list across the UK between now and Christmas.
Workers - including Mr Lewis and Alan Stewart, the newly arrived chief financial officer - will spend alternate Thursdays or Fridays in shops in an attempt to improve service during the busiest period of the year.
The time commitment imposed on head office staff is understood to have surprised some workers because of the scale of the task facing Mr Lewis and head office workers to rebuild investors and customers' confidence in the company during the coming weeks.
Retailers frequently send head office staff to work in their stores, although the scale of Mr Lewis's 'Feet on the Floor' programme is unusual.
Ironically, Philip Clarke, Mr Lewis's predecessor, who was ousted during the summer after presiding over three years of sales declines, began his Tesco career stacking shelves at a store on Merseyside.
News of Mr Lewis's initiative emerged as the crisis which led Tesco to report it had overstated half-year profits by £250m deepened on Wednesday.
In a statement issued following discussions with the City watchdog, Tesco said: "The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has notified Tesco that it has commenced a full investigation following the overstatement of expected profit for the half year which was described in our announcement of 22 September 2014 and which is currently the subject of an independent review by Deloitte.
"Tesco will continue to co-operate fully with the FCA and other relevant authorities considering this matter."
The half-year results announcement, originally scheduled for this week, has been postponed until 23 October, when the new chief executive plans to disclose the outcome of an investigation into the mis-statement.
Four executives, including the chief executive and finance director of the UK operation, have been suspended pending the outcome of the probe.
Sky News revealed earlier this week that the accounting issue, which relates to the timing of payments to suppliers, had prompted Tesco to build a multi-billion pound war chest from a syndicate of banks to safeguard it against any potential credit rating downgrade or breach of its borrowing covenants.
Tesco is also examining a sale of Blinkbox, its loss-making video streaming venture, The Times reported on Wednesday.
A spokesman for the UK's largest retailer declined to comment on Mr Lewis's email.
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