We’re off for Presidents Day, but we wanted to reshare this episode.Walmart is offering higher pay, bonuses and more stock options this year to retain and attract managers. WSJ’s Sarah Nassauer spent a day with one manager, Nichole Hart, to understand why the job is commanding such a high salary these days, and why Hart logs about 20,000 steps a day.This episode was originally published in May 2024. Further Reading: -A Day in the Life of a Walmart Manager Who Makes $240,000 a Year -Walmart Takes On Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods With New Premium Brand Further Listening: -What Walmart’s Aisles Say About the American Consumer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Why are Walmart managers earning six-figure salaries?
Hey, it's Kate. We're off for President's Day, but we wanted to share an episode we made last year about U.S. retail giant Walmart. In this episode, we look at how Walmart compensates some of its store managers with bonuses, stock options, and huge six-figure salaries. We followed one manager to see why the job demands such high pay and perks.
It's about 7 in the morning at a Walmart outside of Waco, Texas, and Nicole Hart is getting the download from her night manager.
Good morning, everybody. Good morning. How's everybody doing? Great.
The night manager told her that some people didn't show up for their shifts overnight, and the letter T on the Walmart sign outside is burnt out. Those are things that Nicole would have to deal with that day. But first, she takes a lap around the store.
Yeah, because I do this every single day. This is my morning. Every morning, we walk a new tour. So there's things that I already, I mean, we walk by granola bars on the cereal aisle. I already know they're coming in on the 25th.
On this day, Nicole had an addition to her morning routine. Our colleague, Sarah Nossauer. Sarah was going to follow Nicole around to try to understand her job. Sarah became interested in managers like Nicole when she saw a press release Walmart published about raising their pay. What stood out to you in that release?
Well, my first thought is, why do they feel the need to do this? Is turnover going up? Do they feel they're losing some of their better store managers to other big box stores? The competition for those folks is really, really, really high across retail.
Walmart has a manager for each of its 4,600 US stores, and some of them can now make more than $400,000 a year because the company is offering them bigger bonuses, higher salaries, and stock options.
It almost can't be understated how important a store manager is to Walmart. They are the ones who have the most control over the sales and profit of that box, of that store, and those stores are the most important financial entity in the whole company.
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Chapter 2: Who is Nicole Hart and what is her morning routine?
And on that particular day, something unexpected happened with a customer who had a camera rolling.
Hi.
Can we get some Snoop cereal on the shelf?
Snoop cereal on the shelf. I used to have those and they never sold. Thank you.
Y'all have a great day.
You too. He was recording me. There was a guy who came up filming her, Nicole, and one of her managers who was asking a question about Snoop cereal. Snoop had sued Walmart. We didn't know really what was going on, but it was something related to that. She has to sort of have a calm answer while she's being filmed. What did you learn from spending a day with Nicole?
I think seeing sort of how the chaos can be wrangled was just really, really interesting and eye-opening for me about what it really actually takes to run a store. How so? It's like they're managing all the humans that work for them and with them up and down, managing up their bosses and the people that work for them.
They're managing all the stuff and making sure it arrives at the right time and can be unloaded and is on the shelf. And then they're managing customer expectations and trying to drive sales.
And now, Nicole is getting paid more. Last year, her total income was $240,000, about half of that from bonuses. Walmart put out this statement announcing higher pay for store managers and bigger bonuses. Like, when you heard that, what did you think?
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