Walmart Cuts Workforce, Will Not Open New Stores

Walmart on Thursday substantiated media reports of the company cutting the quantity of its corporate manpower, even as it strengthens the levels of frontline “essential workers”.

The largest retailer of USA has cut off several workers in divisions such as store planning, merchandising, logistics, and real estate, people aware of the issue informed Bloomberg—and those cuts don’t contain reorganization within its approximately 4,750 U.S. stores to strengthen divisions and eradicate certain regional manager positions, the Bloomberg sources said.

Nonetheless, the retailer has recorded continuously rising sales and may be among the few of large, good-performing corporations amid the coronavirus pandemic, the report pointed out.

A few of the affected workers were notified via a Zoom call while others were informed in person, as mentioned by unnamed sources. Employees who lose their roles will reportedly be given their salaries till the end of January, when the retailer’s financial year-end concludes as well as yearly bonuses are allocated.

“We are continuing on our journey to create an omnichannel organization within our Walmart U.S. business, and we’re making some additional changes this week,” Jami Lamontagne, a representative of Walmart, said in a statement. “Our customers want to have a seamless experience whether they’re shopping in our stores, using our app or shopping online.”

John Furner, head of Walmart’s U.S. operations, is anticipated to talk about the layoffs in an announcement to employees Thursday.

While Walmart didn’t divulge the exact quantity of workers to be slashed, the verdict follows a new trend among retailers to cut off staff. Macy’s stated earlier in July regarding cutting 3,900 jobs whereas L Brands stated it would cut off 850 corporate employees or 8% of its manpower earlier in the week.

Retailers are battling as an outcome of this pandemic, which shut stores for the time beingdue to the coronavirus. Now that the bulk of stores have restarted, retailers are struggling with new safety standards and a decline in customer demand. However, for Walmart, it is quite the opposite. It has remained open in spite of the reduced hours throughout the pandemic and has also witnessed its sales rise in the past few months.

Nonetheless, Walmart is not inaugurating new stores in the U.S., particularly at the rate it once was, Bloomberg announced. It is also wanting to come to be a nimbler company, centralizing its store and online departments into one – an action that was started with the closing up of the Jet.com e-commerce business owned by the company.