Covid-19: Walmart is eliminating hundreds of corporate jobs

Bloomberg

Walmart Inc might be one of the few big winners in the pandemic, having posted surging sales month after month, but that isn’t stopping the company from tightening its belt.
The world’s biggest retailer has laid off hundreds of workers in units including store planning, logistics, merchandising and real estate, according to people familiar with the matter. It is also reorganising its roughly 4,750 US stores by consolidating divisions and eliminating some regional manager roles, two of the people said.
Some of those affected were told in-person, while others learned over a Zoom call, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they aren’t authorised to speak publicly. Conversations with those impacted will continue throughout the week. Those who lose their jobs will be paid until the end of January, when Walmart’s fiscal year ends and annual bonuses get doled out, according to one of the people.
The company declined to comment specifically on the plans, saying via email that
it would “share additional information after we’ve completed our communication with associates.”
“We are continuing on our journey to create an omni-channel organisation within our
Walmart US business and
we’re making some additional changes this week,” Walmart said in the email, without clarifying. The company said its goal is to increase “innovation, speed and productivity.”
Walmart is performing well thanks to soaring demand and its low prices during the pandemic. The move is an acknowledgment that the retailer is simply not opening many new stores in the US anymore, so it doesn’t need as many people to find new locations and design them.
It’s also part of a multi-year streamlining effort that has sought to consolidate its brick-and-mortar and online divisions, bringing cohesion to what had been disparate — and sometimes conflicting — functions. The changes to store operations follow a similar move in 2017 that reduced the number of US divisions from six to four. Walmart has re-named its store divisions “business units,” and will now have three for its massive Supercenters and one for its smaller Neighborhood Markets, which are the size of traditional grocery stores.