![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/towncryyers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/shopping_walmart_shopper_retail_tv-1024x576.jpeg?resize=1024%2C576&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\u201cWe are within ten miles of most Americans,\u201d says Cornell, who saw same-day delivery demand nearly triple and curb- side pickup service soar 700%. For years, the retail sector had been losing its way with customer service. Yet this shift was an undeniable consumer benefit. \u201cTarget has become truly convenient,\u201d says Paul Trussell, Deutsche Bank\u2019s retail analyst. \u201cIt\u2019s taken years of investment, but now you can buy online, pick up in store or use their app to have someone put the product right in the trunk of your car.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So shoppers and shareholders have benefited. But something even more profound has occurred with a third set of winners: workers. To say that high-stress, low-pay retail gigs have lived at the bottom of the economic food chain is an insult to plankton. In 2019, the median annual wage for a retail worker was $25,250, with little upward mobility and turnover rates running about 60 percent a year. All this dysfunction was subsidized by you, the taxpayer\u2014the Economic Policy Institute estimates that more than 35% of retail workers receive public assistance. Little wonder that no brick-and-mortar retail company has ever before appeared on our Just 100 list, created in partnership with nonprofit Just Capital, which spotlights America\u2019s best corporate citizens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But something happens when clerks and salespeople suddenly become essential frontline workers. In July, Target accelerated a plan to raise its minimum wage by two dollars to $15 an hour. Best Buy and Walmart soon followed\u2014and upped the ante, with Walmart pledging to pay some store managers up to $30 an hour. Bonuses, paid sick days and stricter safely measures came next. Yes, respect and consumer demand prompted the wage hikes. More critically, though, the stores of the 21st century need better-trained, multitasking employees to make them run. \u201cOur workforce will need to evolve in a way that meets the needs of customers,\u201d says Best Buy CEO Corie Barry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The result: Five brick-and-mortar retailers appear on the 2021 Just 100, led by Target at number 15. \u201cAs an essential business, if we were going to take care of America,\u201d CEO Cornell says, \u201cwe had to take care of our team first.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As in any pandemic, there have been victims. Long-suffering companies like JCPenney, J.Crew, and Pier 1, none of whom shifted fast enough, have filed for bankruptcy. At the same time, Target shares are up 60% since their late-March low. Lowe\u2019s is up 140%, Home Depot 75% and Best Buy 105%\u2014all trouncing the S&P 500\u2019s 43% gain. Allowed to stay open while most businesses were shuttered, these megamerchants absorbed demand from millions of bored shoppers flush with nearly $300 billion in stimulus checks and few places to spend it. \u201cAll those dollars have to go somewhere,\u201d says Citi analyst Paul Lejuez.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The victors, in this case, actually shared the spoils amid something of an arms race for workers. Walmart, the world\u2019s largest private employer, raised wages, paid more than $1 billion in bonuses and added 14 more annual paid sick days. \u201cOur emergency-leave policy has safeguarded upward of hundreds of thousands of associates who knew that they could take time off and be secure with their job,\u201d says Donna Morris, Walmart\u2019s Chief People Officer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Home Depot, too, has paid out $1 billion\u2013plus in bonuses and extended paid leave. \u201cSpring is our Christmas season, but we canceled all our promotions because we didn\u2019t want a traffic surge in our stores. Safety came before sales,\u201d says CEO Craig Menear. \u201cWe let our team know Home Depot had their back. Take care of your workers, they take care of your customers and the rest takes care of itself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition to Covid pay, corporations are investing re- sources to promote racial equality and increase diversity. In June, Walmart\u2019s foundation pledged $100 million for a center to promote health, education and training for underrepresented groups. People of color make up 47% of Walmart\u2019s 1.4 million U.S. employees. Women represent 55% of its workforce, including about half of store managers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Target, whose Minneapolis headquarters sit less than four miles from where George Floyd died, pledged to increase the number of Black employees across the company by 20%. Black staffers currently make up 15% of its workforce. Among Target\u2019s 350,000 employees, 50% are people of color; 58% are women, accounting for nearly half of its executives. \u201cIt\u2019s important that our team, leaders and board reflect the 30 million\u2013plus families we serve each week,\u201d Cornell says. \u201cDiversity is critical to bring that to life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Going all in on physical stores requires investing billions in employees. \u201cYou can be digital, but you\u2019ve got to deliver digitally with a human,\u201d says Walmart\u2019s Morris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As stores become more digital and jobs more complex, companies must increase pay and perks to attract and keep employees. The latter is extremely tricky (and expensive) in an industry with such high job churn. \u201cYour employees must feel as much differentiation working at Target as customers feel shopping at Target,\u201d says Brandon Fletcher, a retail analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Few felt good about Target in 2014 when Brian Cornell was named CEO. At the company, which traditionally promoted from within, he was an outsider in more ways than one. He grew up in Queens, New York, under tough conditions. His father died when he was in elementary school. Heart disease put his mother out of work and his family on welfare. Grandparents pitched in; school and sports offered salvation. Cornell graduated from UCLA in 1981 and spent the next 30 years as retail\u2019s version of a career military officer, relocating 15 times as he climbed the corporate ladder at Tropicana, Gallo Wines, craft store Michaels, Sam\u2019s Club and two different tours at PepsiCo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He took over a Target in tatters. The previous year, a data breach had exposed the credit-card numbers of 40 million customers. Meanwhile, a poorly executed launch of 124 stores in Canada was racking up hundreds of millions in losses. Target, which had earned the upscale nickname \u201cTarjay\u201d thanks to its high-quality products, was now saddled with shabby stores and stale brands. \u201cThey were quickly going the way of Kmart,\u201d says Barclays analyst Karen Short. \u201cThe stores were messy and out of stock. Employees were unhappy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Steven Bertoni (Forbes Staff) Amid the Covid carnage, Target, Walmart and Best Buy have finally figured out how to compete against Amazon and sell in the 21st century. Investors and consumers \u2013 and workers…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3226,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[228,918,919],"class_list":["post-3225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-pandemic","tag-retail-giants","tag-walmart"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/towncryyers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/180622-amazon-mc-1124_36a8ba8a051fde1141e943390ac804f9-1024x682.jpg?resize=1024%2C682&ssl=1\")
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