“We are as good as our associates are equipped to be able to serve our customers and I couldn’t be more proud of the progress the organisation has made.” In March this year, the company lifted the pay of approximately 425,000 of its nearly 1.5 million employees. Depending on the employees’ location and the market, the increases ranged from US$13 to $19 per hour. While US President Joe Biden is still attempting to mandate a $15 minimum hourly wage at the federal level by 2025, Walmart decided to join some of the country’s largest businesses in taking matters into their own hands by raising minimum pay.  Target raised the starting pay of its US team members to $15 per hour in July last year and Costco has set its minimum pay at $16. Amazon has also been publicly advocating for a federal $15 per hour minimum wage. “When we announced our investment in our associates, our stock price went down, it has now recovered and in better shape than it was,” Furner said. “I think that we’ve shown in the past few months, and in the last five years, that investing in our people and in our teams, is the right thing to do and will help us run a better business. We are also investing in our growth.” In September last year, Walmart increased the wages for 165,000 of its hourly employees in its Supercenters. The company also raised the pay for its staff in the deli and bakery sections. In the past few years, Walmart has also invested in the education of its associates, offering enrollment in online academic degree programs for $1 per day.  “Walmart is not just offering jobs but careers because we are investing in our associates’ long-term success,” Furner explained. Stepping up during the pandemic According to Furner, during the pandemic, the business experienced the benefits in their investment into staff training. “Our associates really stepped up last year, they worked so hard and responded so quickly,” he said. “I don’t know how [our operations team] did it, but they sourced around 80,000 plexiglass shields for cashiers and pharmacies in just a short period of time, and they changed store hours, they closed entrances. Then the decision was made early to stop operations and our care centres and optical centres. All those things happened quickly.” “It was amazing what our organisation was able to do.” Furner said the company also prioritised listening and learning from what the other parts of the world had been doing during the coronavirus outbreak. Earlier during the pandemic, while the US had not yet made face mask wearing mandatory, Walmart teams were already using them in their stores. “We tried to get ahead of that early by making masks available for our associates to be able to wear in the stores and the distribution centres,” he said.  “Second, we were very thoughtful about how we protected the operations and the food supply chains because many in the communities in our country depend on shopping at Walmart for basics like groceries and consumables. My hat [goes] off to the team and the food supply chain who worked so hard to do that.”