Walmart’s new workplace has gold stars, ‘attitude cards’

Bloomberg

Walmart Inc wants to change how its work gets done.
US’s biggest private employer is testing out a comprehensive new framework for how its stores operate, including changing some roles and responsibilities and emphasizing teamwork, accountability and skill improvement. The new model, dubbed “Great Workplace,” is already in place in about 75 locations, primarily its smaller Neighborhood Market grocery stores, and will expand to certain departments in more than 50 of its massive supercenter locations next month.
The new model will include pay raises for some hourly and salaried supervisors, who will shoulder more leadership responsibility in return.
Staffers lower on the totem pole will receive more training, additional support from managers and better recognition for jobs well done.
“Associates like smaller teams, and they like having a connection with a leader. They want something they can own and to know if they are winning or losing every day. And today that does not always happen,” Drew Holler, US senior vice president of associate experience, said in an interview.
The goal is to improve Walmart’s reputation as an employer, which has been under attack for decades from labour activists and has spawned a spate of lawsuits accusing the retailer of everything from gender and age discrimination to not paying employees during breaks in their shifts.

New Structure
Store managers remain at the top of the new structure, but under them will be about a half-dozen “Business Leads,” who will manage the store’s finances and all hiring efforts, among other duties.
Their salaries will start about 10 percent higher than what assistant store managers currently make, according to a Walmart spokesman.
Reporting to them will be “Team Leads,” whose pay starts at $18 an hour. They’ll supervise groups of eight to 10 front-line associates.
Supercenter locations will be comprise about 15 to 20 teams, each with one “Academy Trainer,” who will work to “upskill” employees and make sure they “understand the correct way to perform their jobs,” according to internal documents viewed by Bloomberg. The role is a way to bring the company’s network of training academies, which today primarily teach only supervisors, to the rank and file.
Every store in the programme will receive a “toolkit” with magnetic boards, used to assign employees individual responsibility — Walmart calls it “ownership” — for specific areas of the store, like the wall of prepackaged salads.
The kit also includes “Attitude Cards” that managers will carry around with them during shifts, so they can remind staffers of the four behaviours promoted by the program: Be bold, be an owner, be open and be kind.