If you’ve worked in retail before, firstly, thank you — since it’s a near thankless job.
If you have held a job in the industry, or if you’ve even spent time in a big box store recently, you’ve probably noticed how difficult it can be to manage so many moving parts at once.
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A labor shortage forces the remaining folks to pick up extra hours. Being short staffed has unintended consequences, too. A rise in theft and other retail crimes make the job dangerous at times.
And the retail industry has gotten more competitive, which can make working in it tougher.
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A quick consolidation of the industry accelerated by covid put many smaller shops out of business. Prolonged mandatory closures or minimized operations decreased foot traffic — which almost means declining sales. When many of these places went under, they were bought out or replaced by larger corporate incumbents, which are sometimes even harder to work for, since they typically have longer hours and more staff needs.
But big box stores have their own issues across all levels, from corporate offices down to the boots on the ground.
Some Walmart store managers make six-figure incomes that can even exceed the paycheck of the U.S. president.
Image source: Tim Boyle/Getty Images
Big box stores still struggle
Many big box stores are quick to mention problems that have persisted long after COVID-19. Some, including Target and Walmart, have spoken about the rise in inventory shrink, the industry term for product loss due to theft and other unpaid losses.
Target CEO Brian Cornell has said stores had been struggling with “an unacceptable amount of retail theft and organized retail crime.”
And Dicks Sporting Goods CFO Navdeep Gupta told investors that “The organized retail crime impact came in significantly higher than we anticipated.”
Profit losses aside, working in one of these big box stores comes at a cost to staff wellbeing at times, too.
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A recent Retail Workplace Survey by Loss Prevention Magazine revealed that 60% of retail workers saw some form of violence on the job in the past year. Here’s how that breaks down:
23% of those surveyed said they were a victim of verbal assault14% said they were a victim of physical assault10% said they were the victim of bullying or emotional assault3% said they were the victim of a sexual assault
Some Walmarts paying out
Many of these unsavory aspects of retail are why employee attrition is so common nowadays. But losing staff is expensive and time consuming, since retailers are forced to reallocate resources to hire, train, and re-train new employees after one has left. It also tends to be bad for company morale.
Walmart, however, tries to avoid this issue by hiring and promoting from within, giving employees an incentive to stick around and rise through the ranks.
Beginning on February 1, the retailer said it will lift its base pay for market managers from $130,000 to $160,000.
Here’s how some of the pay changes will play out for managers:
Base pay: up from $130,000 to $160,000Stock grants: up from $75,000 to $100,000Annual bonuses: up from 90% to 100% of base pay
“Walmart is increasing base pay, bonus opportunity and annual stock awards for our Market Managers,” Walmart said in a statement.
When added together with bonuses and stock grants, some managers will stand to take up over $600,000 at the end of the day —roughly $200,000 more than the salary for a sitting U.S. president.
Walmart says about 440 managers are already within this pay band.
Such pay is “key for our business and for serving our customers however they shop.”
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