Walmart Debuts One Global Walmart Academy
As part of its commitment to associate development, Walmart is launching one global Walmart Academy to serve its employees around the world through a mix of digital and in-person offerings. Over the coming months, more than 2.3 million associates will be able to access job-specific retail training, along with new well-being and leadership courses designed to build and grow their careers and improve customer service. The worldwide rollout builds on the $1 billion U.S. investment that Walmart made last year to provide associates with career-driven training and development over the next five years.
The global Walmart Academy will unite all training and development programs, including the recently introduced College2Career program, to create what the company called “one of the largest learning ecosystems in the world.”
In a blog post, Lorraine Stomski, SVP, learning and leadership at Walmart, laid out Walmart Academy’s current areas of focus: developing on-the-job skills to keep up with trends and customers’ expectations, growing future skills for associates in such new positions as InHome Delivery specialists, and building leadership skills for new store, club and supply chain managers, more than 1,200 of whom are expected to participate in an in-person immersive leadership experience. This event, according to Stomski, “will focus on growing our leaders and teaching them more about Walmart history and culture, while giving them the opportunity to meet and learn from company leaders.”
Since 2016, associates have learned both virtually and in person at one of the 200-plus physical Walmart Academies across the United States. To date, the company’s U.S, employees have completed more than 2.4 million trainings; last year alone, Walmart Academy trained more than 400,000 U.S. associates. Front-line associates in the United States can also take advantage of Walmart’s Live Better U program, which pays 100% of college tuition and books.
“No matter the degree associates want to obtain or skill they want to learn, we are committed to giving associates around the globe the right learning support to turn great jobs into great careers,” wrote Stomski in the blog post.
Each week, approximately 230 million customers and members visit Walmart’s more than 10,500 stores and numerous e-commerce websites under 46 banners in 24 countries. The company employs approximately 2.3 million associates worldwide. Bentonville, Ark.-based Walmart U.S. is No. 1 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2022 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America.
