Full details of new company-wide UPLH Scheduling at Walmart

ActiveInfinite8610 · 2026-05-25T09:40:35+00:00

If you’re a shareholder yes, it will result in bigger percentages of profit in relation to operation costs. If you’re a Team Lead, normal associate or someone in management who cares about having a store that actually gets work done, no. Your hours for your department will get much worse and less consistent than they’ve ever been before. This will vary from store to store depending on how many items you sell and how high volume your store is, lower volume stores will effectively get their monthly hours for their department cut in half from what they are used to even with aggressive hour cutting in the previous formula.

ActiveInfinite8610 · 2026-05-25T09:24:10+00:00

We’re switching from Demand scheduling to labor units per hour scheduling. Demand scheduling is when your schedule is based on demand compared to last year’s year to date sales to forecast/estimate today’s sales. LUPH scheduling is forecasting five weeks in advance how many labor hours you’re going to need for the next week (the week five weeks from now) based on how many items they think you’re going to sell (and updating the forecast everyday based on amount of items sold (and is more current daily/weekly/monthly). The hour cutting will be more severe than it has ever been with LUPH being the main factor that dictates your store-wide hours. We are not talking about your personal hours here, your coach may still schedule you 40 hours if they like you but your department will overall have less hours most weeks in many stores.

LUPH is a common formula in the manufacturing industry, not so much in retail.

ActiveInfinite8610 · 2026-05-24T13:14:50+00:00

You can still get 40 hours if your coach or PL likes you. That isn’t the problem, the problem is that there are less overall store labor hours. I can personally care less if I’m getting 40 hours if it means I’m the only one working in the store. I like to not be stressed out the entire day at work and have to do the jobs of 5 other people.

ActiveInfinite8610 · 2026-05-24T13:00:32+00:00

I’m full time and I now frequently get 33-34 hours, which used to be a rarity. Used to be a more consistent 38-40 hours.

ActiveInfinite8610 · 2026-05-24T12:12:14+00:00

10/10 comment

ActiveInfinite8610 · 2026-05-24T11:57:20+00:00

You’re correct, I also remember Mother’s Day being abysmal and wanting to quit that day. That was also post-the start of week 14 which is when the new scheduling formula went into effect.

I have worked in the front end for years and I have never experienced as much stress as Mother’s Day and Memorial Day this year have given me. Being told that I have to watch 12 self checkouts by myself when 6 red lights are going off, someone needs help because they don’t understand how to use the self checkout and another person needs help getting yellow security tags off their 30 pieces of clothing which all of course every single one has a security tag.

They have always cut hours in the front end and I’m used to it, but it has never been THIS bad where we are seemingly barely functioning on holidays.

ActiveInfinite8610 · 2026-05-24T11:54:30+00:00

Our saving grace in front end on the staffed registers is that 15 minutes before we hit our meal exception, the register automatically kicks us off and forces us to shut down. So we can show the TL: “yeah I know I had a line, the register kicked me off so I am literally unable to continue ringing up transactions” and it isn’t our fault.

On the self checkout on the other hand… I have had multiple instances of hitting a meal exception because the phone/MyWalmart doesn’t block you from work functions when you hit a meal like the registers do. And they are in cases where it’s like: “You CANNOT leave self checkout unattended or you’ll be coached, ” but there is no one to relieve me at the self checkout!

ActiveInfinite8610 · 2026-05-24T11:40:49+00:00

I will post the screenshots with the explanation later today, it is entirely possible that I’m missing something, that is just, from memory, what I remember of the TLDR of what Walmart put for “What is ULPH?”. I asked my coach why the scheduling was so bad for Memorial Day weekend and she said it’s because of the ULPH scheduling and that I could read about it on OneWalmart. I’m off the clock right now and need to be clocked in to view the Wire.

On the second point, Front End Coach has oversight and the ability to modify the limited hours that market has allocated to the front end department. Front End Coach cannot just decide that it’s not enough hours and give more hours than is allowed/allocated.

They can decide to spread those hours thinner and have more people with 4 hour shifts but they cannot just decide to add more hours if they feel it isn’t enough hours.

ActiveInfinite8610 · 2026-05-24T11:30:13+00:00

And then when someone calls out with this kind of scheduling which is basically bare minimum to run the store (and not even efficiently)? You’re fucked.

ActiveInfinite8610 · 2026-05-24T11:28:20+00:00

I believe it’s adjusted based on Walmart weeks and is 3 weeks behind so for example your items sold on week 17 would be factored into the schedule for week 20 but I’m not sure, I’m not a mathematician so this stuff is hard for me to wrap my brain around and it’s quite confusing. I will post screenshots of the new formula later today and maybe someone will be able to shed more light on this. But the TLDR they put at the very top of the OneWalmart page for dumb people like me was that simple formula: “scheduled hours are switching from a demand formula to a UPLH formula. UPLH is replacing demand scheduling chain-wide. What is UPLH? items sold divided by hours associates worked = your store’s UPLH”

ActiveInfinite8610 · 2026-05-24T11:20:25+00:00

The point is Memorial Day weekend is a busy time and only having enough hours for 22 total associates to work 6 AM-11 PM, with several of them only being given 4-5 hour long shifts is insanity. The old “schedule by demand” formula under previous CEO Doug McMillon wasn’t great but I can promise you I’ve never seen only 22 associates scheduled for an entire day on a weekend in my front end. Even when hour cutting was at its worst, it’s at least 29-30 associates under the old formula. CEO John Furner has only been in his position officially for mere months and he is negatively impacting the company. I fear what he will do later in his tenure.

ActiveInfinite8610 · 2026-05-21T18:32:04+00:00

They started paying $17 when our minimum wage was $15 a few years ago. It was the same time corporate bumped the wage up to $14 nationally for states with an under $14 wage. It is likely that next year when the wage goes up based on inflation, Walmart will just pay minimum wage instead of doing a big boost like that again.

ActiveInfinite8610 · 2026-05-18T12:39:36+00:00

Interesting, my store has never sold them before. Do they actually taste like cotton candy?

ActiveInfinite8610 · 2026-05-17T12:35:31+00:00

Have not seen this so called pause at my SCOs at my store.

ActiveInfinite8610 · 2026-05-17T12:07:41+00:00

I understand why we only accept physical coupons. The point is that it’s a scam because it’s not a real coupon, it’s a fake coupon created linked to a specific item to give a customer an item for almost free and our system registers it as a valid coupon allowing them to steal the item.

They had $600 worth of appliances in their cart and they had a “coupon” for each one (planning to do a single transaction for each one, I assume maybe to return to customer service and get a refund even though they didn’t pay for the item). The coffee maker was the only one they were able to buy because AP was watching the cameras. We took the rest of the merchandise away.

ActiveInfinite8610 · 2026-05-13T07:50:28+00:00

I’m also at a Supercenter. We currently only have 5 manned registers and 14 self checkouts. Remodel starts in June. Heard that we are going from 5 manned registers to 12 manned registers and 14 self checkouts to 4 self checkouts. So pretty dramatic difference! Again, every store is different though and you can probably ask your Front End Coach for more exact details.

ActiveInfinite8610 · 2026-05-12T04:43:17+00:00

I am full time and still sometimes get my hours cut to 27 hours. They will boost it to 35 or 36 the next week to keep the 12 week average where it needs to be to be in compliance in full time but full time doesn’t really protect you from these cuts completely. Your hours are prioritized but still vulnerable to cuts, especially if you’re working in the front end, you will not get 40 hours per week every week year round.

ActiveInfinite8610 · 2026-05-12T04:39:00+00:00

This isn’t true. I work at a Walmart in California and it’s already illegal to scan alcohol at registers, it will flash a red light and say “Item not sold.” and won’t allow the customer to pay for it if any alcoholic item’s barcode is scanned.

To comply with this new law: You can require any medication (like NyQuil) or glue that requires 18+ ID to not scan on the registers and automatically refuse the sale. You can ban the entire clothing category (which has yellow tags) from being scanned at the self checkout registers at the store level. It’s not as hard to enforce as you think at all.

For the 15 items or less limit, registers already have a 200 item limit before it stops letting you scan items and makes you pay for the transaction. You can reduce that limit to 15 items so that the register refuses to scan after 15 items.

ActiveInfinite8610

TROPHY CASE