How Sam’s Club made good jobs for frontline employees
John Furner knew he’d come to a special place when he stepped into the Lubbock, Texas Sam’s Club in the fall of 2017.
Furner had just taken on the president and CEO role for the membership-only retail warehouse chain, and he’d gone to the Lubbock location to ask the manager questions about operations. But when he asked for a tour, the manager brought over a dozen team leaders to serve as guides. As they walked around the club, the manager let the team leaders explain the ins and outs of daily operations.
“It was very clear: Show me a great group of team leaders in a club, and I’ll show you a great club,” Furner said during a recent talk with MIT Sloan professor Zeynep Ton and her management of services students.
After that visit, Furner started looking for the same type of environment in every store. It also helped serve as part of the framework for a reinvestment in good jobs for frontline employees at Sam’s Club. These employees include the men and women at the checkout registers, the ones behind the butcher and deli counters, and at the bakeries. The move generally increased revenue and membership since its implementation — despite the company closing more than 60 stores and eliminating about 10,000 jobs in 2018.
“You could say ‘Let me wait until the revenue gets better, and then I’ll invest in people.’ Or ‘let me invest in people, and then hopefully, the revenue follows,’” Furner said. “So we decided on the second choice, which was invest in people at the same time we were investing in productivity tools.”
Furner is now the CEO and president of Walmart U.S. — Walmart Inc. owns Sam’s Club — and he was joined by Walmart U.S. Executive Vice President and COO Dacona Smith during his talk with Ton. Here’s some of what they learned pursuing good jobs at Sam’s Club.
