Walmart announces more associate perks, including retention bonuses and learning opportunities

It’s a big week at Walmart. The retailer’s annual shareholders’ meeting is on June 5, amid what’s known as Associates Week, when the company welcomes top associates from across the country to its Bentonville, Arkansas headquarters to be recognized and celebrated.

As it welcomes its high achievers, it has also unveiled new offerings that it hopes will incentivize employees to grow their careers with Walmart, according to a company blog post.

One of those offerings is a new associate-to-technician pipeline program that will train associates to become facilities maintenance, HVAC, and automation technicians. The program is a response to Walmart’s skilled trade workers shortage, and the jobs will pay between $19 and $45 an hour, Walmart noted, compared to the average $20 an hour associates currently earn, according to ZipRecruiter data.

The company is also expanding its free education program, Live Better U, which launched in 2018 and provides employees free GED classes, college degree programs, and certificates. The expansion will offer more skills certificate options, which can be completed in an average of four months. Walmart hopes that associates who complete Live Better U will fill the 100,000 “higher-paying and in-demand” jobs it needs to fill over the next three years.

In an effort to incentivize retention, full- and part-time associates are now eligible for annual bonuses of up to $1,000, based on tenure.

The company has also announced employee stock grants, a telehealth program, and a GenAI assistant this past year, to help ready the workforce for the future of the business, Lorraine Stomski, SVP of enterprise leadership and learning at Walmart, told HR Brew last summer.

“The end goal is not about corporate office,” she said. “The goal is to make sure that we are actually upskilling for roles across the company.”