06 June, 2017
At a time when so many retailers are laying off staff, and there is an feeling of disenfranchisement among associates, this is a great way of getting them engaged to promote positive customer experiences.
In an effort to trim delivery expenses and keep pace with Amazon's online sales, Walmart is trying out a new delivery service: its 1.5m employees.
Using existing workers to deliver orders has clear savings advantages for Walmart.
The retailer has been testing the service for the past month at just three of its 4,700 stores - and two of them are in New Jersey.
Employees who want to participate will be able to use an app to specify how many packages they are willing to deliver, Jariwala said, as well as the weight and size limits on the packages. President and CEO of Walmart E-Commerce Marc Lore said this program is optional for the associates.
"When so many workers are paid so little that they need government assistance to make ends meet, it becomes a necessity, not a choice, to do what they can to earn more", said Randy Parraz, director of Making Change at Walmart, a group funded by the United Food and Commercial Workers.
"Not only can this cut shipping costs and get packages to their final destinations faster and more efficiently, it creates a special win-win-win for customers, associates and the business", he said.
The company is unrolling a voluntary pilot program where employees can drop off packages on their way home, avoiding the expensive "last mile" costs (delivery from a Walmart distribution center to a customer's house). There's actually a Walmart location within 10 miles of 90 percent of the USA population! Unlike crowdsourced delivery, where the driver has to travel (often out of the way) to pick up the package, then drive the full distance to deliver it, our associates are starting at the same place as the packages. Walmart will deliver items that are not in-store, or ship-to-home orders to the store for associate delivery. Once this network is complete, according to Lore, the possibilities are endless.
The care the packages will receive in transit is an open question; what type of condition is the cargo area for the rusty 1998 Honda Civic that some associates commute to work with?
