Wal-Mart has been dogged by criticism of the standard of its stores in recent years, including long checkout lines and insufficient stocking of its shelves. A Reuters analysis of the giant discount retailer’s growth and its employee numbers may help explain why.
Over the past decade, Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) opened nearly 1,500 new stores in the United States, a 45 percent increase in space and equivalent to more than 4,000 American football fields, while its sales have grown by 50 percent. But based on rough headcount figures provided by the company, the expansion was in stark contrast to the growth in its U.S. workforce, which was only about 8 percent in that time. It means the store space per employee increased around 34 percent.
The disparity may help to explain why Wal-Mart acknowledged earlier this year that its customer service needed to be improved significantly as it was hurting sales growth, and why it is now investing a lot more in its workforce and technology to improve the standard of the stores and how shoppers are treated there.
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