Walmart Aims to Help More People Rejoin the Workforce
Walmart Inc. is expanding its partnership with Path Forward, a New York-based organization focused on creating training and career opportunities for people who have put their careers on hold to do things like raise children or care for family members, or those who have had to relocate for their spouses’ careers. The partners first launched their collaboration in 2018.
This year, according to a blog post by Bobbie Grafeld, VP of people-Walmart Labs, the mega-retailer is introducing the Path Forward program at various locations, among them San Bruno, Sunnyvale, and Carlsbad, Calif.; Walmart’s hometown of Bentonville, Ark.; and Reston, Va.
“We are looking for up to 100 candidates (over triple the number in 2018!) across all locations to pursue roles in areas such as engineering, user experience, product management and data science,” Grafeld noted in her post.
As in 2018, the program will be open to women and men with at least five years of professional experience who took a career pause of at least two years for caregiving. The program emphasizes learning and development and the gaining and retraining of such skills as software engineering, and product development.
Along with dedicated professional development workshops, program participants have access to networking opportunities across the Walmart and Path Forward communities. After completing the four-month program, qualified candidates may also apply for available full-time positions at Walmart.
Last year, more than 30 women with backgrounds in engineering, user experience, product management and data science took part in a paid four-month “returnship,” with about three-quarters of them going on to take full-time roles at Walmart.
“We’re hopeful that this year we will have a similar success rate and bring even more amazing, full-time, diverse technical talent to Walmart Labs,” wrote Grafeld, who added that the program “also helps shine a light on the span of opportunities you can find at Walmart.”
In other Walmart news, the company is currently testing a new employee structure at its stores in a bid to reduce its store management staff while still retaining employees and attracting new talent, according to reports by CNBC and others. The structure involves having fewer midlevel store managers to oversee associates. These managers would receive higher pay in line with their increased responsibility.
Operating more than 11,300 stores under 58 banners in 27 countries, and ecommerce websites, and employing more than 2.2 million associates worldwide, Walmart is No. 1 on Progressive Grocer’s 2018 Super 50 list of the top grocers in the United States.
