Walmart chief people officer Donna Morris has responsibility for a global workforce bigger than the population of Latvia. The company’s roughly 2.1 million workers include frontline employees—store associates, drivers, pharmacists, distribution-center workers, etc.—as well as corporate office staff.
As the people leader of such a big and diverse workforce, Morris has a unique window into the changes AI could bring over the next few years. We spoke with her about what she sees ahead for people strategy and how she’s personally staying up to date on technology when things are changing so fast. Here are highlights from that discussion, edited for length and clarity:
How do you see AI impacting Walmart’s frontline and office workers?
If I look at [frontline] jobs, we’ve actually already made a lot of changes. They were digital changes, but they’re not necessarily genAI or AI changes. We’ve automated our supply chain. We’ve made changes with [our employee mobile app] so that when I go and clock in the morning or at the start of my shift, it’s on my phone. It’s not in a back room. If I need to know what my job tasks are today, it’s on my device. If I want to know who’s on my shift, it’s on my device. If I need to do training for my job, it’s on my device.
We have some good tools for our office, but in comparison, we’ve really focused on our frontline to drive efficiency and effectiveness. We’re 2.1 million associates right now. We were [2.2] when I joined five-and-a-half years ago. I’m going off memory, so that’s always a little dangerous, but I want to say our revenue at that point in time was probably in the neighborhood of $450 billion, maybe $460 billion. Our revenue today is $680 billion. So [we’ve] grown a lot, but not the workforce. [Editor’s note: In the fiscal year that ended in January 2020, Walmart’s total revenue was $524 billion.]
When I look at those of us who work in campus roles—even knowing we have had backend systems and processes, we’ve had Me@, we’ve had a generative AI platform called MyAssistant—jobs look the exact same way as they probably did 30 years ago when I started in my function. Somebody who’s an HR generalist or a communications person or a financial planning analyst, those jobs are all pretty similar. In the next few years, all of those jobs are going to morph.
More of the jobs in specialized areas will become generalists. If I take people as an example, as opposed to somebody working in compensation and then talent and then as a people partner, in the future most would probably be generalists and the areas that they’re not as strong, they’re going to have a partner—probably an agent—and it’s going to allow them to transcend and work across the functions.
Jobs will be broader. Leadership will actually become leadership, meaning it will be about your ability to manage people really effectively and probably agents really effectively. Companies will have to think about the agents that they’re developing: how much do those actually represent their values, the cultural nuances of their company, do they actually speak like their employees would?
If you and I were sitting down five years from now, I definitely think our revenue will be much broader. Our workforce, once again, I do not imagine that it will be beyond 2.1 million, and it will continue to reshape in terms of what those jobs look like.
Do you think AI will lead to a smaller corporate workforce?
Right now, I’d say it’s more headcount avoidance. Our revenue will absolutely continue to grow. Our business will continue to grow. We’ve just built this beautiful new campus, but I don’t think we’ll be building more buildings. Even knowing we’ve got a sizable workforce, three years from now, I would guess that we’ll be driving a lot more revenue, but we’ll probably still—now, that still makes us really sizable. But I think a lot of it will be headcount avoidance.
How are you staying up-to-date on AI advancements when things are changing so fast?
That’s a challenge. One is staying networked externally. At Walmart—it’s probably an observation coming from a smaller company into a bigger company—people often think we’ve got the answers inside. This is just a time when I don’t know if anybody actually has an answer.
So I’ve spent time with Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Harvey, Databricks. [Editor’s note: Morris told us that some of those conversations focus on topics like AI’s impact on organizational design and the new jobs that will emerge.] I’m trying to determine: Is there anybody ahead or not? My conclusion right now is nobody’s ahead. Everybody’s trying to figure it out. I don’t think it’s AI [that] is taking the jobs. I think it’s opportunistic for people to say AI is taking jobs. I don’t think people have yet really unlocked the potential of how jobs will change yet. It’s happening—it’s going to happen soon. The rate of change is so fast that I would think by the end of this year we’re going to start to see reshaping, but it’s going to take that time to do it.