Walmart making changes? I'm cynical.

[mhkohne]

Hmmm...
http://www.businessinsider.com/wal-m...trategy-2015-2

Like many management initiatives these sound good, but I bet they don't give the stores the budget or people to actually do them right.

Minimum wage $9/hr - I want to believe this is actually a step up, because I'd like to stop seeing stories about WalMart organizing canned food drives for their employees who can't afford to EAT on what WM pays them. But it conflicts with the 'moar-money' goal of management, so I'm guessing they'll cut hours to make up for it?

Training - That would probably be nice. Though I suspect that they'll use the 'training' time as a way to keep the initial salary below that magical $9, and that a lot of people will never 'complete' their training, and I suspect that actual management in a lot of places. won't bother to train anyone, because they'll be even more harried due to dropping available hours.

Checkout promise - yea, and given that they are supposedly paying more per employee at this point, they are going to allocate more hours so that the checkouts can be manned properly? Why do I doubt this.

Digital integration - wow, that sounds like a whole lot of screaming SCs to me.

Good luck to all of you WM employees - I want to hope that things are going to get better. The cynic in me thinks they are going to get worse, and I hope you come through OK.

[Bright_Star]

It doesn't matter that they'll be raising the wages of the workers who make minimum wage. What will end up happening is that they'll reduce the hours of those who've gotten raises so they keep making what they're making now. Sure, they'll have a "raise" but Corporate will see to it that the rank & file doesn't benefit from it. I used to work there years ago. They didn't want anyone working over 40 hours to save on costs so what they did was either make you come in later or take a longer lunch. & many times give you an extra day off.
They make it sound so wonderfull that they'll be giving raises but don't believe the hype. It won't mean a damn thing.

[Tama]

They stopped paying an extra $1 an hour on Sundays at my Walmart for all new employees. No extra pay for you!

[EricKei]

Just a friendly reminder from the mod team to keep this one out of Fratching territory, guys, as this one has obvious potential to cross that line. We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread, already in progress.

[Javarod]

Hmmm...
http://www.businessinsider.com/wal-m...trategy-2015-2

Like many management initiatives these sound good, but I bet they don't give the stores the budget or people to actually do them right.

I'm not surprised that we're getting a raise, after all, 27 states and the District of Columbia have higher than Federal minimum wage, and the Obama White House wants to raise the minimum to $10.10. Throw in the unions, and Wallyworld has simply decided to get ahead of the inevitable. That said, they are engaging in cost cutting, though not sure what, i do know that one of our AM's is commuting to Bentonville every week, and visiting stores as part of a special project to cut costs. That, and they'll likely shrink or eliminate most of the pay differential. For example, i'm a third shift stocker. Stocking pays $7.70/hr, and there's a third shift differential of $1.50, so i make $9.20/hr. I suspect that after the raises i'll be lucky if i make $10/hr.

Cashiering is solved by the training thing in part, that way they have on demand cashiers for all but the busiest part of the day.

Training, this'll save money in the long wrong if it works right. Currently training is a bit slap dash, tightening up on that should improve productivity and save money... maybe.

[Dreamstalker]

Minimum wage $9/hr - I want to believe this is actually a step up, because I'd like to stop seeing stories about WalMart organizing canned food drives for their employees who can't afford to EAT on what WM pays them. But it conflicts with the 'moar-money' goal of management, so I'm guessing they'll cut hours to make up for it?

Most likely.

Checkout promise - yea, and given that they are supposedly paying more per employee at this point, they are going to allocate more hours so that the checkouts can be manned properly? Why do I doubt this.

Even if more hours are allocated, they might just cut hours elsewhere/steal crosstrained employees from other departments (that are probably already shorthanded to begin with).

Digital integration - wow, that sounds like a whole lot of screaming SCs to me.

Yes, it does/is. We have something similar at my store (S-it phone app that doesn't work right half the time and has its own special issues, 'e-offers' that aren't understood and/or don't get loaded to a card) and it's a royal mess whenever it comes up. Of course we get blamed when the e-offers don't come off...no, you're not being overcharged, and I can't just put a coupon through.