Walmart will close three tech hubs in the US, asking workers to relocate to keep their jobs

It is not every day that hundreds of people get an offer to relocate in order to keep their jobs, but this is the deal that Walmart offered to its employees after announcing that it will shut down their current workplaces. The company announced recently that it intends to shut down three of its technology hubs in the US. However, it did not want to leave hundreds of people jobless and struggling to survive, especially given the current economic situation.

The company, therefore, offered its employees to relocate in order to keep their jobs. Almost all tech employees in the company would have to work in their offices at least two days every week, according to Walmart’s director of global communication, Robert Munroe.

As for the exact offices that are getting closed, those include locations in Portland, Oregon; Austin, Texas; and Carlsbad, California. Munroe explained that the operations would move to other existing hubs. One of them is in San Bruno, California, while another is the firm’s headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Munroe said that all of this was delivered in a memo last week by the firm’s global technology head, Suresh Kumar, who said that the move is a necessary part of the company’s location strategy. Walmart will exit these three hubs, but its executives said that everything is variable. For the moment, there is no set date when this transfer must be completed.

Walmart will pay the transfer costs for those who wish to relocate

The three hubs currently have hundreds of employees working in them, but this is still only a fraction of its business. The firm has 11 tech hubs in total in the US, plus six more of them abroad, according to its website. According to Munroe, Walmart employs more than 1.3 million people across the US alone.

Still, laying off hundreds of employees is not an option for the firm, so it decided that it would pay the transfer costs for its workers who decide to move. As for those who decide to leave the company, they will still receive severance payments.

The directive to return to office does not come as a surprise, as many other major companies in the US have called their employees back from remote work recently. Some major examples include Starbucks, Walt Disney Co, and even Uber, with others likely to make the same decision in the near future.

Disney boss, Bob Iger, said last month that employees would be expected to return to the office for four days per week starting in March 2023. Starbucks requests that its employees work at least three days per week from the office, but it started requesting this in January. With that being the case, Walmart’s request for employees to work from an office at least twice per week is not that bad. Two years ago, Kumar said, “We believe the future in tech will be one in which working virtually will be the new normal, at least for most of the work we lead.” Munroe now commented that the move is still within line to that language.