Walmart has broken the human resources mold with their offer of tuition reimbursement.
The retailer, along with Sam's Club, has been putting in an extra effort to improve their employees' engagement at work while attracting more workers. Rather than taking a typical route of exaggerating how "happy" people are to work for them, they decided to gear their focuses towards education. That's why making the offer of paying for employees' college tuition was a no-brainer.
The mega-store joined forces with University of Florida, Brandman University, and Bellevue University to provide workers with associate and bachelor's degrees for only a dollar a day. The online courses specially designed for working adults will also have the expenses of books and other fees covered by Walmart. The only stipulation is that they must pursue a concentration in business or supply-chain management.
Spokeswoman Erica Jones explained the specificity in studies is because it, "will be relevant across the industry and for future work opportunities,” according to The Washington Post.
Another plus to the program is that employees can sign up after working for Walmart for only 90 days. Though ending their employment will result in the store no longer paying for the expenses, they will still be allowed to pursue their degrees on their own.
Work schedule conflicts have been a topic of concern, but The Post reported, "they [Walmart executives] expected as many as 68,000 employees to sign up in the first five years.
