BENTONVILLE, Arkansas – This may be a good year to hire and promote at Walmart.
Walmart executives said Thursday at the company’s annual meeting that it has launched a pilot program to give college graduates and one-year graduates, including Walmart employees, a head start in management.
Through the College2Career program, they are offered a job as an “emerging coach” with a starting salary of at least $ 65,000 a year. These positions have the potential to move into store management in just two years and at a six-figure salary.
Walmart executives received an average salary of $ 210,000 last year, and the stores they run are each like a large company under one roof with average annual sales of $ 100 million and 300 employees.
The retailer has more than 5,300 stores in the United States and said it has 1,200 new Walmart, Sam’s Club and supply chain managers going through what he calls an “immersive leadership experience.”
These are many new hires at the management level, but Lorraine Stomski, senior vice president, associate learning and leadership, said the figure also includes compliance and distribution centers.
The company is training people for jobs that didn’t exist just a few years ago, such as delivery specialists at InHome, Stomski said. Walmart plans to hire 3,000 people for the service of delivering groceries to customers’ refrigerators. It will begin in Dallas in late summer.
Walmart said it is also expanding in-house training and college benefits to employees in its markets outside the U.S.
“We really believe we have a way forward for all of our partners,” said Donna Morris, Walmart’s director of people. He added that the company also has jobs that are not now in traditional retail, such as healthcare, financial services, cybersecurity and advertising.
Morris said he is emphasizing well-being, including physical, financial and emotional health. He said “the next pandemic may be around mental health,” and the company is working with front-line store workers to increase the flexibility of their work schedules.
CEO Doug McMillon told shareholders at the company’s annual meeting on Wednesday that the goal is to continue to offer competitive salaries and benefits and advance more employees to leadership positions. About 75% of Walmart’s salaried employees in store and supply chain management jobs started in hourly positions.
“Our goal is to turn even more careers into careers by strengthening a scale of opportunities for our associates,” McMillon said. Walmart’s average hourly wage is now $ 17 in the United States
Under McMillon, Walmart has organized in-store and distribution center training at 200 Walmart Academy regional locations, each serving about 26 stores.
Texas was the first state to get one of the academies in 2016 with a location in Carrollton. In 2019, it opened its first distribution center academy in Sanger, North Dallas, Denton County.
In addition, stores are being trained with virtual reality headsets to simulate real-life scenarios and 700 learning modules on mobile devices. Late last year, Walmart said more than 411,000 U.S. employees were trained in academies. (C) 2022 The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
