Contributor: Kevin O’Connor, Director of Growth at Designit
As of April 2024, Walmart is offering its store managers higher pay, increased bonuses, and more stock options. It’s a strategic bid to retain and attract more managerial talent. And since managers are often promoted from entry-level positions at the retailer, the broader aim is to incentivize increased employee retention overall.
It’s a smart move from Walmart. The company’s right to focus on managers: they’re the linchpin within regional stores – the person who can truly have a ‘make or break’ impact on the site’s overall success.
Modern retail businesses need a savvy, empathetic manager who has a clear understanding of how the business runs both from a physical and online perspective. If that person is already ingrained in the company culture, having progressed through the ranks internally, so much the better.
Perhaps the best thing about Walmart’s employee experience strategy, though, is its simplicity. Compensating people fairly and making them feel valued isn’t rocket science. Which begs the question, why hasn’t the approach been adopted industry-wide?
The job-to-career pipeline
There’s sometimes a perception that less senior retail positions are temporary jobs that people take as stopgaps. Perhaps they’re working part-time while studying, or around other family or lifestyle commitments.
This may be true for a significant proportion of the workforce, and the contribution that these employees make shouldn’t be undervalued. But equally, it’s essential that retailers demonstrate there are viable career pathways for those who do want to stay and progress within the company. By investing in managers, Walmart is doing exactly that.
Not only is this investment important for managers themselves, but it also shows a clear blueprint for more junior colleagues as to what they can expect to achieve if they perform well: that you can go from the shop floor to management, or eventually even the boardroom.
And those who do so are deeply ingrained in the company culture as a consequence of their career path. Both retailers and the teams these managers lead can then benefit from the empathy and understanding these managers have for their colleagues.
This makes for an incredibly effective leader within a specific business, as opposed to someone who comes in with an MBA and a more generic view of best practices.
EX affects CX
Positive employee experience is central to a positive customer experience. If employees can look after their families and meet their day-to-day lifestyle needs, they’re much more likely to have a proactive mindset and be able to focus on performing at their best. With the increased job satisfaction and incentives that Walmart’s investment brings, employees have a stronger impetus to go above and beyond for the customer.
Customers need to feel heard, and they need to feel respected. By making sure employees are in a position to provide this level of customer service, retailers are much more likely to see success. And it’s not just Walmart that can be held up as a beacon of exemplary customer experience. Audio manufacturer Bose offers a 24/7 customer service helpdesk with a team of employees that famously go above and beyond for customers.
Whether it means replacing faulty products with brand-new upgrades without quibbling, or providing temporary replacements while issues are rectified, the level of customer brand loyalty that this can inspire when delivered over many years would be the envy of many retailers.
Consistent online & offline CX
Retailers have been known to lag behind from a technology standpoint. Some of the more established senior individuals within organizations haven’t always adopted the mindset of embracing the latest technology. Which is a shame, because the right tech has the potential to benefit and even transform how their business operates.
This means that it can be very difficult for retailers to find someone who has the skill set to operate across both the digital and physical realms. But to stay competitive, it’s crucial for retailers to identify and nurture these people. With its employee experience strategy, Walmart is investing in multi-skilled talent, recognizing that they will be critical to the organization’s long-term success.
Walmart understands that its managers now ‘live in two worlds’ – effectively fulfilling online orders and mastering technology that automates some of the work while balancing the usual retail responsibilities of keeping shelves stocked, managing and motivating employees, and keeping customers happy to increase sales and drive profit.
The retailer uses a simple but effective employee app that lets the flow of information – from a manager asking for a sink to be cleaned to stock availability and control – to deliver an effective, efficient experience for staff and customers. This digital design infrastructure is one of the backbones in its strategy to create streamlined employee and customer experiences.
Key takeaways
Walmart’s employee experience strategy can essentially be distilled down into three key tenets for other retailers to replicate.
First, transparency: be clear with employees about what their long-term growth plan could look like. Secondly, understanding: make sure [email protected] realize the impact they have on the customer experience and therefore the business as a whole. And thirdly, training: provide tools people can use for career development whether they choose to stay or not, but couple this with a clear direction for how to progress within the company.
In doing so, retailers can ensure they’re optimizing their most valuable asset – their people.
