There’s a lot of talk going around again about another round of layoffs in the next couple of months. Is there any truth to this? It’s really disheartening—why ask people to relocate to a smaller place like Bentonville, only to face the risk of layoffs? It feels unfair, especially considering the salary and the disruption involved. Hopefully, these are just rumors and there won’t be any layoffs anytime soon.
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I could DEFINITELY see them looking to automate Merchandising and cutting headcount even further for BA, Replenishment, mods, and yes even the Buyers. All those new programs aren’t for the merchant’s benefit. It’s to cut headcount in my opinion.
At home office, headcount cut is based on your par score and how much you’re costing the company.
And the more you cost the company, the more likely you are to get cut-especially long term associates.
To reply to them wanting to cut Merchant headcount. That has been coming for a while.
They’ve been trying to automate mods, automate contract negotiation, automate forecasting. They’ve also been pulling back on how many mods they drop per year. The handwriting has been on the wall in my opinion.
I could see them doing what they did with replenishment when they implemented GRS, and over the course of the next 10 years eliminating Buyer jobs. In replenishment they did a big chop around 2013/2014. After that they just started not backfilling replenishment roles as they got used to running most things with automation.
They won’t be able to get into their business at a granular level, but very few merchants can do that anyways these days with the tools they are provided.
I tell any of my merchant friends that I care about to just keep their head on a swivel. I worry for them.
Nope. Stores are chronically understaffed. No one from HBA, HW or vision is going. It’s hard enough to keep store associates they can’t risk losing more.
However, every one at HO in Bentonville should be concerned. Numerous salary areas are in danger, especially with renewed efforts to implement AI in departments that can easily be assimilated by software and forecasting tools. Merchants, buyers, and technology are at the top of the list. Some I have talked to are saying by end of 3rd quarter.
Start making plans if you could be affected.
They could definitely cut 1-2 employees out of the vision department. That would be at least 4000 people and 2 out of each pharmacy that would be 8000 people.
Heard there are 2500 more to go. I would assume it would be before holidays!
It would appear the last couple of weeks in October. That gets the reductions complete by 3Q. Still though, anyone in tech needs to be worried all the time.
@at only one? They are already at two for this year and will likely have one more before year end. They have two a year on average. They range in size, but be assured there are numbers cut at least once a year. This year we got one in February, one in May, and still have Q3 which usually sees one happen.
They have to spread them out so it's a small blip on the radar and folks with short attention spans will move past them quickly. People seem to think these come out of short term last minute decisions, but that's not the case. They have them planned out pretty far in advance. There's an entire support infrastructure, internal and external, in place to help "transition" folks from Associate to Former Associate.
The only thing that's generally a secret is "who" will get cut. They can't create a clear pattern or it might look bad. So whole departments, facilities, roles, offices, all could be cut/closed anytime.
As for relocation, just know that when that happens, and folks choose to relocate, that's not the optimal outcome for WM It means they didn't achieve reduction numbers they wanted, so they will roll them into the next one. Relocating will not make you immune to the next layoff, many folks have learned that recently.
Best to have a good exit plan, because it's not a case if "if it will happen", but "when will it happen".
https://www.newsweek.com/walmart-lays-off-employees-three-states-2081906
@OP Where did you hear this? I thought there would only be one. Guess I was too hopeful. :(