Walmart is axing hundreds of corporate jobs and bringing remote employees into the office

Previously-remote staff can work hybrid schedules, the Journal reported.

Walmart did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment sent outside standard business hours.

Last week, the retailer announced it will close two more stores, bringing the number of closures this year to eight. The company quietly reduced its US store count by more than 100 locations between January and August last year — a repositioning celebrated by Wall Street. The company operated 4,615 US stores as of January 31, according to its website.

Walmart, the country’s largest employer, has 1.6 million workers in the US. It is one of several companies that have been pushing a return to office mandate — a tactic career experts say is a way of getting rid of employees without conducting mass layoffs.

The move has been called quiet firing. It’s a subtle way to make roles less appealing, motivating workers to quit rather than slashing jobs only through layoffs, BI previously reported.

Major companies across the US have enforced RTO mandates in the past year, including Meta, Google, and Salesforce.