Good morning!
When Doug McMillon took over as Walmart’s CEO in 2014, he decided to make some changes.
The 33-year company veteran had a mandate to revive stagnant sales and fight off some formidable e-commerce competitors. But he also set out to change the company’s narrative, and focusing on its relationship with workers was a big part of that, writes my colleague Phil Wahba in a new magazine feature.
Since 2015, the company has raised entry-level salaries from $9 to $14 per hour, and created more learning pathways to facilitate internal mobility among workers. It has also introduced new benefits like covering employees’ college tuition. Those improvements have been instrumental in motivating workers, keeping them in the fold, and improving the high turnover rate that plagues the customer service industry as a whole.
McMillon has also courted good will in other ways, supporting efforts to reduce Walmart’s carbon footprint by making good on a pledge to significantly decrease greenhouse gas emissions six years ahead of schedule.
“We’re not a perfect company, but we’ve done a lot of good things for the environment, for our associates, for others,” he says. “I would just love for the reputation to match the reality.”
The reputational shift that has already taken place is likely a factor that has made it possible for the company to shutter its regional offices and either relocate or attract corporate workers to its company’s headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, a town of around 55,000. That includes engineers, marketers, merchandisers and all manner of retail executives who could live in places like New York City or Los Angeles, but have instead chosen to live in the Ozarks.
“Walmart would not have been able to pull off this modernization, and by extension ability to better compete against Amazon, without having employees on board,” says Wahba.
Emma Burleigh
emma.burleigh@fortune.com
