Walmart Total Rewards Program for Front-Line Associates
This paper proposes a total rewards program tailored to Walmart's front-line retail associates, who represent the majority of the company's approximately two million employees. Beginning with an overview of Walmart's low-cost business strategy and workforce composition, the paper segments the associate workforce by motivation and need, identifying flexibility, basic benefits, and social interaction as key drivers. It then recommends improvements across the four pillars of total rewards — compensation, benefits, development, and work environment — with particular emphasis on leveraging Walmart's scale to deliver superior health and dental benefits at lower per-employee costs. The paper also identifies risks of inaction and proposes metrics for evaluating program effectiveness.
- Introduction and Purpose: Why total rewards strategy matters for Walmart
- Overview of the Organization: Walmart's size, cost strategy, and workforce profile
- Segmentation of the Workforce: Associate subgroups and their distinct motivations
- Recommendations: Four-pillar improvements to compensation and benefits
- Risks of Inaction: Competitive and financial consequences of no change
- Conclusion: Total rewards as employer-of-choice repositioning tool
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What makes this paper effective
- It anchors every recommendation in Walmart's specific business context — the low-cost strategy, the scale of 1.5 million associates, and the competitive labor market — rather than offering generic HR advice.
- The workforce segmentation section thoughtfully identifies distinct subgroups (retirees, students, full-timers) and links each group's motivations to specific program elements, giving the recommendations practical grounding.
- It highlights Walmart's unique competitive advantage — its in-store health infrastructure — as a lever for delivering superior benefits at lower cost, which is an insight-driven rather than formulaic argument.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper uses a structured policy-recommendation format: it establishes organizational context, segments the target population, applies a recognized four-part framework (compensation, benefits, development, work environment), and closes with a risk assessment and metrics. This approach mirrors professional HR consulting reports and shows how academic frameworks (Kaplan, 2005; Rumpel & Medcof, 2006) can be operationalized for a specific organization.
Structure breakdown
The paper moves logically from purpose (why total rewards matter) → organizational overview (Walmart's strategy and workforce) → segmentation (who the associates are and what they need) → recommendations (what changes to make and why) → risks (consequences of inaction) → conclusion (summary of value proposition). Each section builds on the previous, making the argument cumulative and coherent at roughly 900 words.
Introduction and Purpose
With a greater understanding of how key business objectives — such as employee attraction, retention, and motivation — contribute to overall business outcomes, human resources departments have been challenged with expanding their scope and examining the total rewards experiences of their employees. When the links between business strategy, people strategy, and total rewards are mapped out, it becomes apparent that placing the right workers in the right jobs requires a comprehensive total rewards strategy (Kaplan, 2007). This paper sets out a total rewards program for Walmart, focused on the front-line workers who work in the retail stores and make up the majority of the company's approximately two million employees. An important distinction must be made between these front-line retail workers and employees in other parts of the business who may have more specialized skill sets and for whom a total rewards program might look quite different.
Overview of the Organization
Walmart is the world's largest company by revenue, its largest retailer, and its largest private employer. While Walmart employs people in virtually every type of role — famously including its own meteorologist — most of its employees are associates, or front-line retail workers. Walmart's business strategy is to be a low-cost provider of household goods, including groceries, and as a result the company must control costs in all areas of the business. Any change to the compensation package for associates will be rolled out across at least 1.5 million people, and the company therefore pays close attention to the total rewards package for these workers.
In recent years, as the unemployment rate in the United States has dropped to just over 3%, finding and retaining quality workers has become increasingly difficult, and this has forced Walmart to rethink its total rewards strategy — including finding ways to attract new categories of workers. One example is the move it made to offer tuition benefits as a means of attracting high school-aged workers who not only work hard but also want flexible hours and are likely to remain with the company throughout their education if they receive the tuition benefit and free SAT preparation (Meyersohn, 2019).
The total rewards program at Walmart must therefore maintain a low cost structure per employee, enable the company to attract capable workers who can execute efficiently while still delivering a reasonable level of customer service, and help the company overcome a fairly poor reputation as an employer. A comprehensive total rewards program is well positioned to meet all of these criteria.
Segmentation of the Workforce
Walmart's employees range from senior executives tasked with running the world's largest company by revenue, to a wide range of specialized professionals, to the associates who form the low-wage core of the workforce. Associates are often part-time, work the flexible hours demanded of retail roles, and perform relatively low-skilled tasks. Nevertheless, they must perform those tasks well given the company's need for a highly efficient operation. The development and environmental needs of this workforce, while real, are generally not as intense as those found in highly competitive technical roles (Rumpel & Medcof, 2006).
For its associates, Walmart competes with other low-wage employers for talent, including other retailers, some manufacturing facilities, and a range of service industry employers. Many individuals in this category have circumstances that make a traditional 9-to-5 office role impractical; even those who might prefer such a role may benefit from odd hours, part-time schedules, or flexible shifts. Walmart has specific programs to attract retirees and students, for example, as a supplement to workers who prefer more hours. Store managers benefit from having a large number of flexible employees who can augment a core workforce of full-timers.
Most associates are not primarily motivated by career advancement, and that factor alone is unlikely to draw them to Walmart or any similar employer. However, for workers who do have advancement ambitions, Walmart needs to offer opportunities — either to move up within the stores or to transition into more specialized roles elsewhere in the company, of which there are tens of thousands. Its student programs, for example, position the company as an employer of choice after graduation. Other entry-level employers, such as McDonald's, have fairly comprehensive programs to identify and develop talent, and Walmart can certainly benefit from similar approaches.
Low-obligation, flexible income appears to be among the primary drivers for people to work at Walmart. Workers in this category often seek out employers that offer benefits such as health care, since many jobs at this wage level provide little in the way of benefits beyond what is required by law. The social dimension of the work environment is also important for many associates, particularly given the high level of customer interaction. Retirees, for example, are specifically attracted to Walmart by the opportunity to engage with others outside of the home.
Conclusion
Total rewards programs offer the benefit of making a company more attractive to job seekers than competitors offering similar wages — and at a lower total cost to the company. Walmart can improve its total rewards program by focusing on the work environment and development opportunities, and by leveraging its bargaining power to offer superior benefits in areas such as workplace health and employee discounts. By doing so, it can reposition itself as an employer of choice for anyone in the market for a flexible, part-time, or otherwise non-traditional job — the very type of employment that suits the many workers for whom conventional employment is not a viable option.
References
Group Dentistry Now. (2019). Walmart introduces first-ever health center, which includes a comprehensive dental clinic. Group Dentistry Now. Retrieved May 7, 2020, from https://groupdentistrynow.com/dso-group-blog/walmart-introduces-first-ever-health-center-which-includes-a-comprehensive-dental-clinic/
Hiles, A. (2009). Tough times demand focus — total rewards strategy. Benefits Quarterly, 25(4), 44–47.
Kaplan, S. (2005). Total rewards in action: Developing a total rewards strategy. Benefits & Compensation Digest. Retrieved May 7, 2020, from http://staceykaplan.com/pdf/Stacey_Kaplan_Total_Rewards.pdf
Kaplan, S. (2007). Business strategy, people strategy and total rewards. Benefits & Compensation Digest. Retrieved May 7, 2020, from http://www.staceykaplan.com/pdf/Stacey_Kaplan_Total_Rewards_And_Business_Strategy.pdf
Meyersohn, N. (2019). Walmart will recruit high school students with free SAT prep and $1 a day college tuition. CNN Business. Retrieved May 7, 2020, from https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/04/business/walmart-college-tuition-benefit-high-school-students/index.html
Rumpel, S., & Medcof, J. (2006). Total rewards: Good fit for tech workers. Research Technology Management. Retrieved May 7, 2020, from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/John_Medcof/publication/233718407_Total_Rewards_Good_Fit_for_Tech_Workers/links/5b214c87458515270fc6cfdb/Total-Rewards-Good-Fit-for-Tech-Workers.pdf
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