For many employees, it can be hard to feel connected to their company, especially at huge corporations like\u00a0Walmart. But in 2024, Walmart U.S. CEO John Furner pulled out the big guns to ensure star managers feel the love\u2014by paying them upwards of $620,000 per year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we did last year was make managers feel like owners,\u201d Furner\u00a0said\u00a0at a retail and consumer conference in April. \u201cThis includes shareholding, which has positively impacted their approach to the company\u2019s profits and losses.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a bold move to boost morale and retention after\u00a0fighting turnover\u00a0and\u00a0manager shortages\u00a0during the pandemic, the $800 billion retail giant gave its top-performing regional store managers a serious payday in January\u2014raising their total compensation to between $420,000 and $620,000.<\/p>\n
Their average base pay was hiked from $130,000 to $160,000, with the rest of the roughly half-a-million dollar salary made up of hefty stock grants and annual bonuses.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the latest wage investment in our people,\u201d\u00a0Walmart\u00a0spokesperson Anne Hatfield\u00a0told\u00a0Fortune<\/em>\u00a0earlier this year. \u201cThis has been a yearslong journey with increases in hourly pay that started in 2015.\u201d<\/p>\n With more than 4,000 store managers across the U.S. (and around 1.5 million workers) when the policy went into effect, the payout wasn\u2019t just generous\u2014it was a calculated bet on culture.<\/p>\n And that bet has been working so far. In 2024, Walmart claimed the top spot on the\u00a0Fortune 500\u2014and landed on the\u00a0Fortune Best Companies to Work For\u00a0list not just last year, but again in 2025. Walmart\u00a0said it\u00a0has also improved its hourly worker retention rate by 10% over the past decade. And a Harvard Business School study,\u00a0set to publish\u00a0this fall, will unveil the business\u2019s success from raising manager and minimum-wage salaries.<\/p>\n With a 1.5-million-strong workforce, it\u2019s not easy to keep everyone happy, but Walmart went straight to the source: cold, hard cash.<\/p>\n Bosses may sling around promises of \u201cunlimited PTO\u201d and swanky office amenities, but it\u2019s more money that most workers really want.<\/p>\n About 73% of workers would consider leaving their employer for a higher paycheck, according to a\u00a02024 report\u00a0from BambooHR. Money talks, yet 40% of employees haven\u2019t received a pay bump in the past year.<\/p>\n Salary deflation and\u00a0a slowdown in\u00a0pay raises have been driving staffers up the wall. As grocery prices continue to soar and the cost-of-living crisis persists, many would be swayed by more money, now more than ever.<\/p>\n \u201cThe cost of getting compensation wrong is easily realized in multiples later,\u201d\u00a0said\u00a0Kelsey Tarp, director of HR business partners at BambooHR.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen employers need to go to market for talent, they might find the salary ranges to be inadequate to attract the talent that is needed; there is wage compression to address\u2014all of which will be more costly in the long run.\u201d<\/p>\n Some employers have already caught on. When Cameo\u00a0wanted workers back at its Chicago headquarters, the company offered $10,000 bonuses for going into the office four days a week, rather than shoving a mandate in their face.<\/p>\n After\u00a0Rolls-Royce\u00a0pulled an extraordinary business turnaround in recent years, it handed out nearly $39 million in shares to employees. It wanted to pay its success forward, by rewarding the people who made it happen. Each staffer got 150 company shares each, worth a little over $900.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to recognize your contribution to our future success and reward you for the role you will play in it,\u201d CEO Tufan Erginbilgi\u00e7\u00a0said in an\u00a0internal memo to employees.<\/p>\n Even when companies are hitting a wall, they turn to pay hikes as a Hail Mary to try to turn things around. When thousands of\u00a0Volkswagen\u00a0employees in Germany were striking over pay cuts and factory closures, the car manufacturer\u00a0offered its\u00a0Tennessee plant workers a 14% pay raise over four years.<\/p>\n After\u00a0Exxon Mobil\u00a0employees faced a tough era of salary freezes, 401(k) match suspension, and intense layoffs, the oil giant\u00a0changed its tune. On average workers received a pay hike of 9%, above inflationary levels\u2014with some top performers who got promoted seeing raises between 15% and 25%.<\/p>\n \u201cOur company performance reflects the hard work, commitment, and perseverance of our employees,\u201d Exxon spokeswoman Amy Von Walter\u00a0said. \u201cWe take great pride in the exceptional business results our teams delivered despite it being a time of uncertainty and significant change.\u201d<\/p>\n A version of this story originally published on\u00a0Fortune.com\u00a0on April 4, 2025.<\/em><\/p>\n This story was originally featured on\u00a0Fortune.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For many employees, it can be hard to feel connected to their company, especially at huge corporations like\u00a0Walmart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2169,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,7,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-news","category-us"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2170,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2168\/revisions\/2170"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Pay raises are essential for employee satisfaction and retention<\/h3>\n
The employers paying up to improve company culture<\/h3>\n