Anyone have any information on any changes coming to the vision centers?! I’m literally sooooo stressed for my job. I’m an optician. We got a new VP just for vision... good or bad?
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I very strongly believe they’re eliminating the VCM role. Period.
I think they’re going to have a health and wellness coach that will oversee D40 and D49.
Definitely there are changes coming our way!!! They are sneaky and always being!!!!!!
Stupid short sighted (sorry for the pun) focus on multiple pairs has not increased sales.
Tear off the bandaid. Either sell the place, or close locations in saturated markets.
VCs are sick and tired of being harassed every single week about an arbitrary metric that has nothing to do with patient care, and frankly nothing to do with increased sales, as evidenced by this past year.
Exceptions can be made, and have been. No one wants to work in vision at Walmart. It’s terrible, boss experienced a company wide outage the other day not one email from home office communicating that something was wrong. I wonder how many people will miss their sales plan due to the outage.
No, the range on the WIRE for non licensed external VCM no certifications start rate is $19-$26.50. So the $27 the person spoke of must be $26.50 and they rounded up.
It’s been negotiable for many years if you’re a new hire. $27 is on the low end of negotiations, wait until that VCM find that out.
Market directors do NOT have your best interests in mind, I don’t care how close you think you are they are out for themselves and their bonus.
Look at your plans, if the director was on your side they would’ve escalated that plans are too aggressive. Your director will still get their bonus and good evaluations.
That’s really strange. Maybe that verifies the rumor of going salary and it’s imminent, and that rate equates to what base salary will be?
New VCM in a market adjacent to ours was just hired in at $27/hour. No optical experience. Two years ago I was brought in at $19/hour with no optical experience. Was told the starting rate was non negotiable. Now I’m certified and licensed and still making less than the new non optical VCM with no experience.
How is this ok? Who in their right mind thinks that this is fair or even smart/responsible recruiting practices? When word gets out, they don’t think folks will be furious?
We are constantly told by higher ups not to discuss our wages amongst ourselves, but that is actually a legally protected activity.
Past time to move on!
Today. Supervisors in the optical lab. 09149 Fayettevile, Ar. Were walked out. Current jobs removed. Then Offered severance or have till February get job with Walmart...and next week will post manager job or reg floor jobs they can apply for.
With the current and worsening economic turmoil, you can be certain that drastic VC changes are coming. Scapegoat central.
The vision centers were going to be sold toNVI or at least managed by them prior to COVID, NVI was trying to secure millions in cash flow. The writing on the wall was when vcms became hourly, that was the beginning. Then they removed optical directors, Kathy king(started her own company while working for walmart, Ron jackson and anyone that knew anything about Walmarts vision business left because they saw that it was on the chopping block. Next vision lost any support from
Field support, again no one knows BOSS or what really happens in the field. Any of the programmers for the software left the company. Then there was a revitalization of optical, they hired regional optical directors that really do nothing except make one or two broadcast videos another waste of payroll. COVID hit and then vision is back to stagnant with too much fat up top that know nothing about what really happens in the field. So now we’re back to the they don’t know what to do with vision but so no one quits we will just tell them that “big changes are coming” and “you’ll like what they’re going to do”.
Lol. Do we have the same MHWD?! 😂😂😂
Taking a “top” performing Rx manager and placing them in charge of 10-15 pharmacies and 5-10 vision centers is just absolutely asinine.
Aside from being too large of a realistic work load, most of these folks clearly don’t have the people skills necessary to manage 15-25 other managers. Just because someone may have been a good manager of a bunch of Rx techs, does NOT mean they will succeed at managing a bunch of other managers who are mostly assertive type A personalities. (Hence the reason they are Rx and Vision mgrs in most cases)
I have worked for probably 30 companies in my life, WM being the largest, and it is BY FAR, the most disorganized, outdated operation. Just an overall underwhelming and disappointing experience.
AWOL, lack of responding to questions, no answers, no one to get answers from, field support isn’t there for vision. Everyone left that knew anything about vision at home office, no pay raises for VCM. Really the billing system they use should be investigated, you can’t accurately bill for patients claims using the system they have and half the time it goes down.
That’s right. No P&L’s for optical and Rx. How embarrassing. How do they not see how bad that makes them look? How do they legitimately expect folks to take them seriously when they clearly do not give these departments a second thought?
Anybody else’s MHWD basically go AWOL over the last six months? I mean, they’re always scarcely seen. But something happened within the last 4-6 months that has made them really disappear.
Makes it very evident something is afoot.
“Big changes coming”…that’s what they’ve been telling us. Most of us realize they tell us this to just to keep us in role, they don’t know what they’re doing with their pharmacy’s or opticals. Software is terrible, hours are terrible, lack of staffing, really lack of any care. Walmart home office employees are the best of the worst talent in the market. I’m pretty sure they haven’t even given the year plan for pharmacy or optical, does anyone work in home office?
Haven’t been any posts here or on this topic in four years……how y’all feeling now? Secure?! 😂😂😂
Prediction from beyond :
Realignment coming for HWDM now the dust has settled for pharmacy cuts. Districts will be tighten up and some upper management cuts will follow. Vision Center will be untouched this first wave, but hours/wages/sales are going to be on chopping block soon. VC is not driving sales like it use too and its pulling the new lean mean wantbe Amazon down.
Are these temp vcam jobs to let people go? What happens to people filling them when Wal-Mart finds these jobs are a waste of money?
Any news on vcm or vcam?
Any buzz about April?
These pleas are depressing me. Is Walmart and Sam’s the only jobs left? Both look to drastically cut the payrolls and get online to compete. Brick and mortar in 2018 and beyond won’t cut it. They know and so do you. Don’t wait until the pink slip before you get wise. They’re telling you in plain action: it’s a wrap—-save yourselves!
No plans for Sam’s to go 3rd party. The new gig is working out well!
If anyone has any solid topsecret information, please, let us know as soon as possible so that I can may plan accordingly. I do not think that I would be sad if we went to a third party as long as we could keep our time spent.
Sincerely a old VCM.
Sam’s will be the first for the health and wellness side to go third party, I’m not sure how vision could go div 1 but realistically how much worse could it get? Vision gets nothing from the company now, maybe with leadership from div 1 they’d get more from the company.
Sams will go 3rd party. Walmart VC will probably go Div1 and pharmacy will need less district management.
A lot of Walmart VC already have 3 party.
The goal is rolling it out to the rest of them!
“Save wages so we can live better.”
All the cuts could be a way of them making the vision center artificially more profitable than they truly are to create better deals with NVI or another 3rd party... Walmart just had their best quarter in how many years and now it’s cut associates payroll across the whole vision side. Sam’s club also isn’t using Walmart labs anymore, and Walmart seems to use sams as their pilot stores for a lot of different programs.
Cut hours here too. Second job coded for cashier to make up the difference. It may just be me, but it seems like every person I get when I call H&W seems to know nothing about lenses or insurance. I needed to make sure the lab did a plano base curve to match bc on patient's current lenses and the guy didn't even know what base curve was. We also haven't seen any management from VCAM up in months. When they do come to the store, they hide in pharmacy and we practically have to run them down on their rush out the front door. And the last frame mod was a joke. So much excitement for 5 frames while there are several outs we can fill because they have been deleted for months.
3 party sounds right...
Personnel and AP also.
I am a full time employee and am now down to 21-27 hours. And cuts are still having to be made. I'm very worried about my job and some of the changes heading our way. The communication level has never been very good here so it will all be a surprise until right before (sometimes right after lol) a change is made.
Realistically It wouldn’t surprise me if they move vision to third party, NVI lease expires 2020 and NVI is trying to raise cash... YBM, not one mention of vision center or future plans for vision. Cuts at labs during back to school, one of the busiest times of the year and look at the delays were getting- with excuses from a machine broke, software error, lab closing one day a week. Home office doesn’t support vision, and I’m not sure if there’s many people left on the vision side in home office. Online optical is growing fairly quickly with online eyeglass and contact lens exams...I think they don’t know what they’re doing with the whole health and wellness division in general. Humana(which Walmart built up) is now partnering with Walgreens, Walmart lost the bid on pillpack, and they lost 1800contacts a few years ago(which they also built up)...but anyways the previous poster is right somethings gonna come visions way..
Brace yourself!!!
VC can’t go all these years without changes!
We were told they were going to close some of the low volume vc’s And focus on having fewer in bigger areas to boost profit. That is strictly a rumor from what I am aware. I asked my market manager because we are a low volume store in our market. He said he knew there were some changes coming but that was not anything he had been told. He said he’s actually worried about his position himself so he would give us a heads up if he felt we needed to be concerned. So idk. But we are steady going to lose business if they do not get these lab and insurance issues squared away!
I have no clue. I know that I go to work everyday waiting to get the axe like so many of the other divisions have gotten or I am waiting for them to do something crazy like hand us over to Div 1. It is my opinion that I could see them doing some type of a restructure that is not in our favour:-(