Time to dirty up those loafers.
Home Depot will be requiring their corporate employees – including the executives and senior management – to work one 8-hour retail shift in a store per financial quarter, according to reports.
Starting in the fourth quarter of this year even remote workers will have to schlep onto the grey floor and don the orange apron for four days a year.
“We need to stay connected to the core of our business so we can truly understand the challenges and opportunities our store associates face every day,” Chief Executive Officer Ted Deker said in a memo introducing the program obtained by Bloomberg.
The policy – which is an expansion of previously established practices of having corporate employees spend time in stores – is meant to create a more cohesive business culture, according to Forbes.
Home Depot raked in over $157 billion in annual revenue in 2023 and boasts over 450,000 employees.
The big box retailer faced a small unionization effort in 2022. The company recently announced that it would no longer screen its employees for marijuana.
Back in August, the place where doers get more done suggested Americans weren’t doing all that much home improvement.
Richard McPhail, Home Depot’s chief financial officer, told CNBC at the time that consumers have adopted a “deferral mindset” since the middle of 2023, resulting in lower spending on home-improvement projects.
The superstore warned that sales for 2024 may not make the same threshold of $150 billion that the company surpassed the last two years.