Walmart is making changes in qualifications for positions within the company and updating its employee development and education programs to align participants with critical jobs available at the company now and over the next several years.
The company has made a point of improving employee prospects during the past few years. It has boosted staffer salaries and benefits. It has made such investments to maintain and develop workers in part to lessen turnover and the associated expenses. Employee training is becoming more important at retail, faced with labor shortages, advancing technology and more complex operational systems, and Walmart has been making efforts to keep staffers on the job longer and potentially build careers with the company.
Now, as related in a blog post, Lorraine Stomski, senior vp, associate learning and leadership, pointed out that Walmart is revisiting its established Live Better U program to focus on skills that qualify employees for key roles within the company. In doing so, Walmart is creating a fast-track method of readying Walmart and Sam’s Club workers for 100,000 in-demand jobs the company expects to fill over the next three years. The number covers jobs Walmart has identified as critical to how it serves customers, including salaried management and hourly supervisor roles in stores, clubs and supply chain facilities. Walmart also wants to help employees develop skills that will facilitate their moving into roles in technology, health and wellness and trucking.
At the same time, Walmart is removing college degree requirements from most jobs as it shifts to a skills-based approach.
The company will more than double the number of short-form certificates and courses it offers to 50-plus options. Employees have requested shorter options so they can develop appropriate skills and move up in the company faster, Stomski noted. Some of the certificates Walmart has available include frontline manager leadership, people and business leadership, data science, software development and project management. In some cases, she pointed out, Walmart has developed the certificate programs itself, including a supply chain operations course created with the University of Arkansas.
Walmart still considers college degrees to be valuable, and associates will still be able to earn them from prestigious institutions, Stomski indicated. Also, the company continues to offer college-start classes so associates can earn an initial semester of credit in a low-pressure environment. However, Walmart is adjusting the degrees it offers so they are targeted to specific skills and jobs where it believes a degree is the best education option. For example, Walmart supports business-related degrees from the University of Arkansas, Purdue Global, Bellevue University and Southern New Hampshire, as well as degrees in supply chain, transportation and logistics management.
Walmart intends its program to have a significant degree of flexibility, Stomski stated, so workers can earn up to six hours of credit just by attending four days of leadership training at one of the more than 200 Walmart Academy facilities in the U.S. A five-day Manager Academy classes in Bentonville, Arkansas, concludes with nine hours earned.
Walmart believes that education and training are good for business, Stomski concluded, and they can be life-changing for staffers as well as true to Walmart’s long-standing culture of developing the employee base, promoting from within and preparing workers for the future.
