I work in Bentonville HO, and so far everyone I have talked to (especially in Merchandising) saw half of their team let go. This is oddly similar to Thanos’s Snapture. So either 1) Walmart hired Thanos, or 2) John had great inspiration from Avengers Infinity Wars (spolier alert). Thousands will be affected by these layoffs.
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@Anon Your experiences were obviously different than mine. I was at WM HO ISD from 2007 to 2017. I was ecstatic at first when I was hired. I wanted to make a difference and make WM my last stop in my IT career. But that was not to be.
Around 2008 there was a small layoff, the first since around 1992, per my manager, The associates kicked to the curb were those with PIPs (justified) and those that Director's had a vendetta against. I was surprised at one excellent associate but I was told that he made our Director (at the time) mad by challenging him on projects (or something). I can't say what the total count was, but only 3 in my area were RIFd.
The next year the same happened. A few more were let go. Again, not a huge amount compared to the latest round of RIFs in 2020.
Things, I believe, settled down as best they could for a few years. Then Amazon happened. WM thought their $#!t didn't stink and were untouchable as the largest retail company in the world. They could no longer compete. Around 2012 is when WM started their regular firing sprees. Multiple times a year. In droves. Entire departments. Ageism. Nobody was safe. WM started buying companies to compete. This was when the $#!tshow that is WM began in earnest.
After leadership would continually lie to us about 'this' being the last round of layoffs, another one would occur days or weeks later. This is when the attitude of the associates in the trenches changed from one of making a difference to one of 'this is just a job to pay the bills.' When you lived in fear that any week could be your last why put any effort into your job? There was no rhyme or reason to who got the axe.
And live in fear, we did. During the week we would be on edge wondering if we would get that mysterious Outlook appointment sent out in the middle of Wednesday night - the kiss of death. HR was blocking rooms early in the week which also told us another round was coming. (HR started hiding this so we could not tell through Outlook.) When Friday came and we still had a job, we would relax on Saturday grateful we survived. On Sunday, the stress would build again knowing we'd have to go back to the office and face this scenario again, ala, Groundhog Day.
My estimate is around half the associates stopped caring. If WM showed no loyalty to their workforce why should we have any back. WM created such a dysfunctional environment. Making a difference became making a paycheck.
I left of my own volition in 2017 because of the stress, dysfunction and watching WM destroy lives (ageism) because they put profits before people. Excellent 20+ year associates were let go simply because they made too much money.
I still have many friends at WM that I talk to and the situation has not gotten any better for those that continue to survive (not thrive) there. Most of them getting close to retirement age are just hoping they can make it a few more years until they can retire on their own terms.
I’ve worked at store level and now I work at corporate level. I will say that as a store employee, I felt a similar way about all the corporate suits.
However, after being in corporate for a couple years now, I have learned the level of importance each of those people have in business processes.
And from my personal experience, MM aren’t the ones who cause issues in processes at store level. The store managers have serious work to do in terms of enforcing and following HO direction passed down from their MM.
While store associates are necessary, the systems stores use, the way their mods are set, their replenishment levels, ALL of the things that keep each store going (minus stockers and store workers themselves) is ran by HO. Hell, even hiring those workers, making sure they get paid on time and correctly, etc, involves the help of HomeOffice sometimes.
I wouldn’t say that anyone in this company is more important than the other. I would say that we each handle different areas of the business and we are important to the areas in which we work.
I think people at store level assume everyone is just making bang a– money and living carefree. That’s not the case. Some of the people laid off were not making as much as they should have been and handling contacts so that main HO wouldn’t have to. I may not be a buyer or a merchant, but my line of business has been majorly affected by these layoffs.
Managers in my building were laid off and most weren’t even in the departments affected by the merge. I honestly don’t know why our building was hit, but man, the entire landscape of my office has changed.
I say all of this to say that it wasn’t just regional managers, MMs, buyers, etc that were laid off. It was also people who fought hard to get their position only to lose it soon after. It was people who were trying to make a difference in Walmart culture. It was people who started from the bottom and busted their asses to get their position.
Our new regional had a conference call with all store managers and stated very clearly: "don't think that because I'm stationed in another state doesn't mean I can't get on my private (yes he said private) jet and be at any store in an hour! All stores better be white glove clean and stocked or it won't be pretty!" His words. Our SM has been in a tizzy ever since because she's an id–t that cant run a store properly and she knows it.
@eli+16ghmh3n OMG THANK YOU. THANK you for speaking the truth. I am so tired of these people who fly around like they are GOD, and that includes the Market who strikes fear into assoc. when they arrive. It is silly. IF a SM and his team can not run a store, and those above the stores use the tech. available and reports to monitor the store.... Target is hiring. This is beyond sad that the home office is as huge as it is. The stores make the money, the people in the stores make the money. Let them be merchants again.
@eli it's basically a meme that people thing that other people's jobs are made up BS. The thing is that when you're looking at a sufficiently large organization with a ton of interconnected software and operational processes, people can have really really specialized jobs that still contribute to the company and those jobs can sound absolutely useless.
You could probably get rid of a lot of the jobs with system upgrades, software upgrades and process improvements, but the cost and effort of getting that done is higher (and you'd have to hire a bunch of people to go do that) than just sticking 1 person to babysit task X for the whole company.
Not so funny now is it, cutting jobs?
You don't need all these people at HO, I'm sorry but you don't.
You need me to open the doors, manage the customers, stock the shelves, unload the trucks, respond to emergency, deal with local regulatory agencies...
You don't need all these buyers, merchants, and people generating green/yellow/red spreadsheets. You DON'T need a regional teams flying around like they're god and you certainly don't need market teams to mismanage and muddy home office direction.
You need associates paid enough they care and leadership boots to the ground in store.
You can Zoom tour and utilize technology to avoid the added expense and travel from these bloated market and regional teams collecting a check.
Things are going forward, not backwards. Johnny knows this and was doing it even before covid19 and that just helped him set the stage for a new HO for the future even more.
It's only going to get better, or, worse for you... depending on which side of history you wind up on.