Strengthening Workforce Development Beyond Walmart
Education beyond high school has often been seen as key to increasing economic mobility, but more than half of American adults do not have a post-secondary degree. Through business and philanthropic initiatives, Walmart and the Walmart Foundation collaborate with stakeholders and thought leaders to promote recognition of skills (rather than educational pedigree) as key to career advancement for frontline workers and invest in organizations that promote equitable advancement. Over the last five years (FY2019-FY2023), Walmart and the Walmart Foundation have invested over $144 million to accelerate career mobility for front-line workers.
To help accelerate the advancement of frontline workers, the Walmart.org Retail Opportunity program funds innovation in four aspects of workforce systems:
- Ensuring all workers can access high-quality learning paths that connect across all types of learning opportunities and provide workers with the knowledge, skills, and abilities that employers value.Not only do workers need high-quality learning and credentials to build their skills, but they also need to understand how those credentials, when connected and stacked together, create a pathway to an available job and a long-term career. For example, we invested in Education Design Lab's micro-pathways initiative. The initiative engaged 30 community colleges to co-create (along with learners and employers in their communities) micro-pathways—a set of two or more stackable, short-term credentials that would result in a job at or above the local median wage. These micro-pathways span numerous industry sectors.
- Enabling transparent career navigation that ensures all workers have the ability and support necessary to effectively navigate paths from good jobs to better careers.While career navigation tools and services exist today, there is a need to make those services more accessible and scalable for frontline incumbent workers, to have those tools and services follow a worker along their career pathway, and to understand which tools and services are most effective for whom and at what stage along their journey. Two research grants—one to the Harvard Project on Workforce and one to National Fund for Workforce Solutions—seek to develop an understanding of the landscape of effective services, tools, and best practices (such as career navigators, job search tools, and apps like Career Karma that match workers to job training programs) and why they have been effective.
- Driving inclusive employer practices that lead to the adoption of equitable, skills-based talent practices that create value for people and business.In today’s tight labor market, employers are seeking qualified, skilled talent to fill important roles. Skill-based hiring and advancement practices can help businesses expand their external talent sources, find and grow internal talent with needed skills, and get the right people in the right roles at the right time. Walmart.org investments have focused on driving adoption of skills-based hiring and advancement practices at businesses of all sizes. As a member of the Business Roundtable’s Multiple Pathways Initiative, we have engaged with 80 leading companies working together to implement skills-based practices. Additionally, Walmart.org funded Jobs for the Future, Year Up’s Grads of Life initiative, and FSG to provide expert support for Multiple Pathways.
- Building an ecosystem that allows data to move between tech systems and platforms that enable workers to identify, capture, and communicate their skills and interests in a way that employers value.As we seek more sophisticated models of career navigation, connected learning pathways, and job matching that leads to more equitable advancement, there is a need for a more responsive, technology-based workforce system and infrastructure supported by verifiable data at both the individual and community level. A grant to the Digital Credentials Consortium (DCC), hosted by MIT, supported the establishment of a coalition of national organizations representing different stakeholders to create a vision for and map of the interoperable technology infrastructure required to respond to our workforce system needs of today.
- Opportunity is not equally distributed across society, particularly along racial, ethnic, economic,gender, and geographiclines.
- Theeconomic and cultural environment favors traditional educational models over on-the-job education and skills development, and there is an immature market for cost-effective, practical tools to rapidly build skills among adult learners.
- Achievement of Walmart’s workforce development aspirationsis dependent on retailers and other similar businesses embracing the business case for frontline workforce development,as well astaking a skills-based approach to hiring and advancement in which an individual's skills and capabilities, no matter where learned, drive hiring and advancement opportunities.
- Social science and economicphilosophyarestill developing on the most effective strategies for frontline workforce development at scale, and there are differences of opinion on what constitutes a good job and a fair and compelling associate value proposition. As a result, there arepressures for faster or more urgent action in certain aspects ofWalmart’soverall human capital strategy (e.g., base hourly wage)that may obscure theimportance of other strategies that promote economic and career mobility (e.g., benefits, upskilling, and mobility).
- Walmart is subject to local, national, and international economic trends and realities. There is strong competition among employers for skilled, diverse workers, and labor surpluses and shortages can impact retail businesses.
- Walmart’s business is evolving rapidly.Customer trends towards omni-channel shopping, including pickup and delivery, change the skills necessary in Walmart's frontline workforce andmay outpace incumbent associates' skills and readiness.Our training and upskilling strategies are intended to address this need but may not always keep pace.
- National and globalcatastrophic events, including pandemics, can exacerbate many of the above factors.
About Our Reporting
- Code of Conduct
- Live Better U
- Centers of Excellence
- Walmart.org
- People in Supply Chains
- Human Rights
1. Data includes both hourly and management promotions and excludes Walmart Home Office promotions.
2. Promotions in FY2021 represented a significant departure from usual levels as we moved Walmart U.S. Stores to a new "teaming" structure. Promotions have averaged 195,000/year over the five years ending with FY2023.
3. U.S. metrics include all 50 states but exclude Puerto Rico. U.S. non-management metrics include all hourly associates, excluding temporary associates.
4. U.S. metrics include all 50 states but exclude Puerto Rico. U.S. management metrics include all salaried, exempt associates.
5. U.S. metrics include all 50 states but exclude Puerto Rico. U.S. officer metrics include president, executive vice president, senior vice president, and vice president positions.
6. Compared to our reporting of this metric in FY2021, we believe the significant increase in the proportion of LBU students who identify as people of color in FY2022 is in part due to the removal of the $1/day fee in FY2022 and the addition of strategic partners such as Morehouse College, North Carolina A&T University, Spelman College, and the University of Arizona.
7. The calculation excludes the following associate types: Home Office, pharmacists, on-site-clinics, drivers, management trainees, and temporary associates.
8. For full- and part-time associates when eligible.
9. The calculation excludes the following associate types: Home office associates, pharmacists, on-site-clinics, drivers, management trainees and, temporary associates. Average total compensation includes average hourly pay, other compensation, and benefits per hour for full- and part-time associates. This does not include special cash bonuses or paid leave related to COVID-19.
10. U.S. metrics include all 50 states but exclude Puerto Rico. U.S. management metrics include all salaried, exempt associates.
11. The calculation excludes the following associate types: Pharmacists, on-site-clinics, drivers, management trainees and, temporary associates.
12. Salaried and truck driver associates: Eligible as of hire date. Full‑time hourly associates: Eligible following 12 months of service. Part-time and temporary associates: Not eligible.
13. Wage metrics in the table exclude the following associate types: Home Office associates, pharmacists, on-site-clinics, drivers, management trainees, and temporary associates.
14. The average hourly starting rate is calculated as the average hourly wage of U.S. associates that joined in the preceding six months. Starting wage ranges were $12-$32/hour (Walmart U.S.), $15-$32/hour (Sam's Club U.S.), and $16-$30 (supply chain). The minimum starting wage rate was increased to $14/hour in Walmart U.S. in February 2023.
15. Average total compensation includes average hourly pay, other compensation and benefits per hour for full and part time associates. This does not include special cash bonuses or paid leave related to COVID-19.
16. This segment includes Walmart U.S. stores and supply chain.
17. This segment includes Sam’s Club clubs and supply chain.
18. Supply chain includes associates who work in distribution and fulfillment centers but excludes drivers.
19. Full- and part-time Walmart U.S. associates receive the discount card after 90 days of employment.
20.According to BLS, 69% of retail workers have access to employer-sponsored defined contribution retirement plans, whereas 100% of Walmart associates have access to such a plan through our 401(k).
21. All U.S. associates meeting age requirements are eligible to participate.
22. Award types and grant values are dependent upon the recipient’s pay band structure or position pay range as stated in the plan documents.
23.Per BLS, 53% of retail workers have access to employer-sponsored healthcare as of 2022.
24. See Figure 6.4, 2022 Kaiser Family Foundation Health Benefits Annual Survey.
25. Full-time and part-time U.S. hourly associates are eligible on their first day. Full-time and part-time salaried associates up to the market level are also eligible.
26. Launched April 2021.
27. Figure represents the number of associates who demonstrated enhanced English language proficiency as determined by performance on English proficiency assessments.
