Wal-Mart is cutting accounting jobs in about 500 stores this week as it continues to shift its focus to employees who interact directly with store customers.
According to Market Watch, individual stores usually have about three employees in accounting roles who count money and manage invoices from businesses that bring products directly to the stores and not from Wal-Mart warehouses.
The company said that invoicing will now be handled by its central office in Bentonville, Arkansas, and money will be counted at each store by a "cash recycler" machine, said Mark Ibbotson, executive vice president of Wal-Mart U.S. central operations.
Ibbotson said that laid off employees will be given positions in the store, but will not be guaranteed the same hourly salary.
Kory Lunberg, spokesman for Wal-Mart,
told CNBC on Wednesday that those new jobs will be positions where workers face customers more often. He added that the "cash recycler" machines will improve the efficiency and accuracy of counting money.
Lunberg said a pilot program Wal-Mart conducted earlier in the year at 50 locations resulted in only one percent of affected employees leaving the company.
In January, Wal-Mart announced that is closing 154 stores in the United States and 269 stores total around the globe as it focuses on its supercenters and e-commerce business,
reported USA Today.
Back then, the closures included 102 Walmart Express stores and 23 Neighborhood Markets, reported the newspaper.
"Actively managing our portfolio of assets is essential to maintaining a healthy business," Doug McMillon, president and chief executive of
Wal-Mart Stores said in a statement back in January. "Closing stores is never an easy decision, but it is necessary to keep the company strong and positioned for the future."
"It's important to remember that we'll open well more than 300 stores around the world next year. So we are committed to growing, but we are being disciplined about it," McMillon's statement continued.
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