Building an Inclusive Walmart and Accelerating Racial Equity

As I reflect on the past year, like so many of you, I feel the tremendous weight of an unthinkable set of challenges. Very traumatic and public displays of racial injustice, against the backdrop of a global pandemic that was disproportionately impacting people of color, forced our nation to look directly into the face of the social systems that create inequity in a way many of us never had before.

Today, we’re releasing our 2020 Culture, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Report. The report details our progress to create greater racial equity across society and in our company. While the work is multifaceted and extends across our company and into the community, there are certain themes that shine through: representation matters, education is the foundation of progress, and we’re investing in change.

Representation matters: We are steadfast in our focus on increasing diversity and equity in the workplace.

• Representation at the officer level is more diverse year-over-year, with a +1.03% increase for women and a +0.61% growth for people of color. The latter was driven by a +1.97% increase in Black and African American officers.
• Women representation in U.S. management is up year-over-year by +.026%, likely aided by a +7.69% annual increase in hourly-to-management promotions and +4.46% gain in total management promotions for women.
• Walmart remains one of the largest employers of Black and African American people, comprising 20.70% of our total U.S. workforce.
• We hired more than 480,000 new associates in the U.S. last year, and total people of color represented 55%, women 49.42% and Latinx 18.02% of new hires.

Education is the foundation of progress: We believe education is power, and we’re investing in programs to equip our associates with the training, tools and resources they need.

• A new Race & Inclusion curriculum was introduced in August 2020 on Walmart’s ULearn platform. The program contains seven learning paths for home office associates and four field-focused paths. More than 105,000 cumulative learning paths have been completed as of January 2021.
• We created the RACE Ahead series to provide a space for transparent, relevant and solutions-oriented conversations. We had more than 17,700 total live connections for nine 60-minute sessions.
• Each of our Shared Value Networks (SVNs) – Criminal Justice, Education, Financial and Health – has identified pillars of focus that will inform our work to help influence social systems toward more equitable outcomes.

We’re investing in change: Walmart and the Walmart Foundation strive to create more equitable opportunities through giving.

• We launched a five-year, $100 million philanthropic commitment to create a new Center for Racial Equity. The first $14 million in grants from the center was announced on Feb. 1, 2021.
• We established a five-year, $5 million commitment to the Equity in Education initiative in collaboration with North Carolina A&T State University, which is the first outcome of our SVNs. This commitment is from the business and is above and beyond the $100 million Center for Racial Equity philanthropic commitment.
• Other recent grants include support of the Reboot Representation Tech Coalition, the Aspen Institute’s Weave: The Social Fabric Project, PFLAG National, and the Ad Council’s Love Has No Labels campaign.

Some of these highlights weren’t on our radar when 2020 began, but they’ve quickly become integral parts of our story and plans moving forward. You can learn more and read the full report here. Walmart’s commitment to culture, diversity, equity and inclusion matters, and we’ll continue on our journey to build a better Walmart for everyone.