Walmart is cutting hundreds of corporate jobs in New Jersey and asking remote workers to return to its office in Hoboken, public filings show.
The nation’s largest private sector employer is laying off 237 workers starting Aug. 14, according to a notice with the state Department of Labor.
Walmart, which has 1.6 million employees nationwide, is mandating that those corporate workers not laid off come into its corporate office in Hoboken.
A spokesperson for Walmart could not be reached for comment.
Changes in “some parts of our business … will result in a reduction of several hundred campus roles,” the company’s chief people officer Donna Morris said in a May memo shared with NorthJersey.com partner USA TODAY.
In addition to Hoboken, some employees were also required to relocate to the offices at Bentonville, Arkansas, or the San Francisco Bay area, the memo said. Workers will have the option to work remotely part of the time, as long as they are in the office the majority of the workweek.
“We believe that being together, in person, makes us better and helps us to collaborate, innovate and move even faster,” Morris said. “We also believe it helps strengthen our culture as well as grow and develop our associates.”
Walmart is only the latest company to offer the relocate-or-resign ultimatum to its corporate employees, as companies struggle to get workers into the office and make use of their largely empty office space.
Career adviser Stephanie Alston wrote on LinkedIn that RTO mandates could be “perceived as disguised layoffs.”
“The return to the office represents an opportunity to reevaluate their workforce needs and potentially restructure their teams,” she said.
According to Resume Builder, 90% of companies plan to return to the office by the end of 2024; the poll relied on responses from 1,000 company leaders.
But one in three company executives interviewed by workplace analyst Gartner said they would leave their employer when presented with an RTO mandate.
Walmart’s troubles
Walmart, which entered the primary care business in 2019, said it planned to shut down its virtual health care service and close all 51 of its Walmart health centers because it was “not a sustainable business model.”
Then in February, Walmart shuttered its startup incubator and innovation lab, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.
The timing of the corporate layoffs after the announced closing of health clinics suggest they may be “part of a restructuring that would allow Walmart to allocate additional resources to more profitable revenue streams, like advertising and fulfillment,” Blake Droesch, senior analyst covering retail and e-commerce at research firm eMarketer, told USA TODAY.
“Firms often get tough on RTO mandates both because they want employees back and also to avoid inequalities,” said Nicholas Bloom, an economist at Stanford University.
Businesses can offer different contracts to remote work employees, such as lower pay; or create new fully remote teams; or “terminate employees that won’t return,” he said.
Daniel Munoz covers business, consumer affairs, labor and the economy for NorthJersey.com and The Record.
Email: [email protected]; Twitter:@danielmunoz100 and Facebook
link
