Home Depot says its $1 billion boost to wages has already improved customer satisfaction and worker safety – a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy Q1

• Home Depot says the $1 billion boost to worker pay that it announced earlier this year is already yielding results.
• The move has led to better staffing, which has improved customer satisfaction and worker safety, the company told investors.

Home Depot says its decision earlier this year to invest $1 billion in higher wages for its workers is already yielding measurable results.

"We're seeing improvements in key customer service metrics as well as benefits to our operations in the form of consistent staffing and less safety incidents across all regions," Home Depot's executive vice president for US stores, AnnMarie Campbell, told investors on Tuesday. "These improvements are exactly what we set out to achieve with this wage investment."

The additional spending, announced in February, allowed Home Depot to boost its starting pay to at least $15 an hour for frontline hourly associates nationwide, and also included improvements to benefits, training, and career development.

Campbell said the wage boost has enabled Home Depot to hire top-tier workers across the US — and keep them for longer, even as labor turnover remains high in the retail industry.

Tuesday's update was part of the first-quarter earnings call in which the company came up well short of analysts' – and its own – expectations on a combination of bad weather out West and softening demand for big-ticket merchandise. Net earnings plummeted 8.5% and sales fell 4.2% from the same period the year before.

When asked how this additional expense would be evaluated against a gloomy financial outlook that rattled the stock market, including an impact on competing retailer Lowes, CFO Richard McPhail held firm: "The investment in wage — which has really proven to have driven a lot of benefit on the customer experience side — that's embedded in our guidance."

If you are a Home Depot worker who wants to share your perspective, please contact Dominick via email or Signal 646.768.4750. Responses will be kept confidential, and Insider strongly recommends using a personal email and a non-work device when reaching out.