Wal-mart Goes Public with Employee Bonus Program

Katherine M., Yahoo! Contributor Network
Mar 22, 2007 "Share your voice on Yahoo! websites. Start Here."

For the first time in two decades Wal-mart has gone public today with their employee bonus compensation program.

Highly criticized by some for not-so-great employee benefits and wages, the Wal-mart corporation has now publicized the fact that 80 million hourly employees will split more than half a billion dollars this year.

Wal-mart claims that they went public with the information as a way of honoring their employees, not to satisfy critics.

The amount per employee is not known for sure but doing a mathematical calculation of the number of employees and the amount of the shares, it's estimated that each will receive an average of about $651.00.

Employees reported that last year they made between $500-1,000 when bonus time came around.

The amount depended on full or part-time status as well as how much profit the individual stores made that year.

Managers have claimed that some employees have received checks substantially higher than last year

Sam Walton started the employee bonus program in 1986 as a way of rewarding wal-mart "Associates" for their hard work and gives them share holding in the companies high profit earnings.

It definitely gives employees an incentive to push sales and improve customer satisfaction.

Managers often encourage staff to help reach monthly sales goals and have profit charts hung in break rooms as visual reminders as to where their individual store is at.

Wal-mart's corporation employs over 1.34 million people in the U.S. including those who work for Sam's Club.

An estimated 1 million of those are hourly employees who will benefit from the bonus.

While some have claimed that publicizing the information this year about the annual share profits is to make it clear to the world that Wal-mart does care about their employees, other's have said it still doesn't make any difference about how they feel.

Critics still believe that Wal-marts priorities are way off base if you look at the bigger picture.

And while $500-1,000 per employees sounds generous, its peanuts compared to what those in corporate got as a bonus.

For example, according to www.wakeupwalmart.com Chief Executive Lee Scott received a $3.94 million bonus as part of a total compensation package of $15.7 million.

Hard working store employees are what really help Wal-mart function as it should. The hourly staff and management are more often then not underpaid and have poor health insurance benefits. They also are rarely allowed overtime and some end up with their expected hours cut as a way of saving money for the company.

One good change to come out of this is that Wal-mart has claimed that they will now split up the annual bonus money into quarterly payments so that employees won't have to wait a whole year.

Another new program will reward employees with over 20 years at the company an extra week of pay each year.

Customer satisfaction will also mean monetary compensation as this summer Wal-mart will start offering bonus amounts for employees that go above and beyond when helping shoppers at their store.

Sources:

Marcus Kabel. "Wal-mart publicizes Bonuses" AP.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-wal-mart-bonuses,0,777723.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines

Published by Katherine M.

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