Wegmans just announced $6 million in college scholarships for 1,500+ employees. Here’s why that matters for every HR and Operations leader.
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Wegmans Food Markets, a regional grocery chain, is investing heavily in the growth of its frontline workforce through its longstanding Employee Scholarship Program. For the 2025–26 academic year, more than 1,500 new employee recipients will receive tuition assistance, totaling approximately $6 million. Part-time workers are eligible for up to $8,000 over four years, while full-time employees can receive up to $16,000, regardless of field of study or career path post-graduation.
This isn’t a PR stunt. Since 1984, Wegmans has awarded over $150 million in scholarships to more than 48,000 employees. It’s part of a broader investment in people: in 2024 alone, 1,340 employees completed formal development programs, and one in four team members advanced into new roles, transfers, or promotions.
Want to launch or scale your own frontline scholarship program? Here’s a tactical playbook:
WorkStep’s platform can power a frontline-focused initiative like Wegmans’ by helping you:
By integrating WorkStep into your workforce development strategy, you can turn education assistance from a feel-good perk into a data-backed retention engine.
Whether it’s scholarships, upskilling, or new pathways to promotion, programs like these prove the frontline is worth betting on. With WorkStep, you’ll have the tools to do it smarter.
Kayla Pimentel, | kayla@workstep.com
Kayla Pimentel serves as a Demand Generation Associate at WorkStep. Leveraging her diverse background in sales and marketing, she is enthusiastic about sharing insights about how to make the frontline a better place to work.