Dive Brief:
- The New York Times reports that with summer here, Wal-Mart’s centralized air conditioning systems (controlled at the Bentonville, Ark., HQ) tend to be on too hot or cold, depending on the location.
- After a recent employee rally (held right before a shareholder meeting), company executives made one of several concessions by agreeing to raise average store temperatures by a single degree for the majority of Walmart locations (one degree warmer in Eastern U.S. stores and one degree cooler in Western U.S. stores). It also will allow stock room employees to dress appropriately for their work and promised to let stores choose music, rather than listen to the same CD over and over again.
- Just a day before those changes, Walmart said that it would raise the starting hourly wage for more than 100,000 U.S. store managers. In February the chain announced it would raise the pay for a half-million entry-level store workers.
Dive Insight:
Even mighty WalMart is feeling the pressure of competition for entry level workers combined with the nationwide movement to raise pay for that lower income wage group.
The Times article reports that Walmart is trying to lose its image as "an exploitative employer with an army of minimum-wage workers," a portion of which often need food stamps or other government aid to pay their bills. After the latest wage increases Walmart workers all make above the minimum wage, WalMart told the Times. Several employees in the Times article remain skeptical, as did the website HRMorning.com.
Kristin Oliver, Walmart’s executive vice president in charge of human resources, agreed that workers are not completely happy, and told the Times that Walmart was working on more flexible scheduling. She also said the company hoped that the combination of higher wages and friendlier policies would make its workforce less transitory, and more likely to build careers with the retailer.
