A cyclist rides past a Walmart Neighborhood Market store on Monday, November 21, 2022 in Bentonville, Arkansas, United States.
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With 1.6 million employees and the largest private workforce in the United States, Walmart continues to hire at its more than 5,200 retail stores and headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. That tough job took a turn this fall when the company announced that many of its jobs would no longer require a college degree.
In a late September company blog post co-authored with senior vice president Lorraine Stomski, Walmart said it was “rewriting job descriptions for campus (headquarters) jobs to include degrees held in addition to the degree a person holds.” “We take into account the skills to do so.” Julie Gehrke, Associate Learning and Leadership; Julie Gehrke, Vice President, Philanthropy; “In order to be hired for the job, you must have the necessary skills for the job, either through a relevant university degree or through past experience or other forms of learning.”
The timing of Walmart’s announcement comes as a number of major employers, from technology to automotive to consulting, including Google, IBM, Tesla, GM and Accenture, are turning to skills-based hiring to fill so-called “new collar” jobs. This is consistent with the desired trend. . The scheme also comes amid growing debate about the value of a university education, long considered a prerequisite for finding employment and building a career, and amid concerns about the weight of student debt. Appeared. Tight labor markets are also changing approaches to recruitment and retention, with greater emphasis on workforce diversity efforts and the introduction of generative artificial intelligence into employees’ lives.
“We truly believe that all learning matters,” Stomski said in an interview in late October. “We want to look at these jobs and say, what do they really need? Yes, many of them may require a college degree, but many jobs require Maybe not. We’re not saying a college degree isn’t important. We’re not saying that for many of our campus jobs, it’s an either-or scenario. I’m saying. ”
Stomski said the starting point in developing Walmart’s new hiring process was to identify the company’s in-demand jobs emerging across the business and the specific skills they require, then determine whether a college degree is required or not. He said it was up to him to decide. In either case, employees can take advantage of Live Better U, the company’s upskilling and reskilling platform, and receive free college tuition at partner institutions such as Southern New Hampshire University, University of Arizona, and University of Denver. “If you want a college degree, you can get it without any debt,” Stomski said.
Major retailers include Walmart and Target, which is working with education platform Guild to offer access to debt-free degrees and accelerated learning programs.
In addition to bachelor’s and associate’s degree programs, Live Better U offers 25 short-term certifications (take less than a year to complete) in enterprise-level areas such as data analytics and cybersecurity (areas with large job gaps). We also offer such skill-building courses. (wide range of talent available), supply chain management, and business economics. “Before, people would pursue a cybersecurity college degree,” Stomski said. “You can now get your cybersecurity certificate in six to nine months.”
Ben Wildavsky, a visiting scholar at the University of Virginia who studies education and skill building and author of “The Career Arts: Making the Most of College, Credentials, and Connections,” says Walmart is taking the right approach. I said I think so. “They’re trying to create an ecosystem within their organizations that builds skills, but they’re also often allowing credits for short-term qualifications that can be built towards a degree. “Assuming they fit in the right way, it will work out well for them,” he said.
At the same time, Wildavsky emphasized that it would be a mistake to downplay the value of a college degree. “We need to accept that what economists call the human capital theory of degree value is actually true. What this means is that even if you go to college and get a degree, It’s not just a piece of paper. People actually learn things in college.”
Walmart also emphasizes this point.
“This is not about eliminating college degrees,” Stomski said, adding that many of Walmart’s corporate jobs will still require a degree. “It could be an ‘and,’ meaning you can go to college and supplement that with skills and experience,” she says.
Building a broader education system and career path
In addition to the targeted skills you acquire in popular majors like education, nursing, and computer science, a broader college education also gives you non-cognitive skills (often called soft skills), according to Wildavsky. . “They learn communication skills, how to work in teams on projects, how to plan and execute over time. That’s why it’s so important to do what Walmart does,” he said. Ta. . ”
Stomski said that while college students can learn to think critically and solve problems, “they [soft skills] “It’s not just a college degree,” she said, adding, “Serving in the Marines gives you that experience.”
The corporate world is not the only major job market where this change is taking place, and it is arguably already more entrenched in the public sector. Minnesota announced Tuesday that most jobs in the state will no longer require a degree, becoming the latest in a growing list of states to eliminate two- or four-year degree requirements.
Examples of roles at Walmart that don’t require a college degree include operations and merchandising positions, but Stomski declined to be more specific. As for the number of jobs that would fall under the new provision, she said, “It could very well be in the hundreds.” “We’re still in the early stages, but that’s our estimate.”
Generative AI, on the other hand, has only been in the public eye for a year or so since OpenAI released ChatGPT, but it has the potential to impact all kinds of jobs in almost every business sector, including retail. It’s becoming a skill. To this end, in August, Walmart launched an internally generated AI tool called My Assistant for all campus employees. “From speeding up drafting processes to serving as a creative partner to summarizing large documents, My Assistant has the potential to change the way employees work and solve problems,” the company said in a LinkedIn post. “There is,” he said.
To familiarize employees at its headquarters with chatbots, Walmart has launched a training program that includes online tutorials. “We’ve created a very safe playground where employees can access My Girlfriend to ask questions and learn how to use prompts,” he says. “As we start to get more intimate with AI, we’re starting from there so that it can actually become a coach for your business.”
Another factor in Walmart’s move toward skills-based hiring is to help promote diversity within its internal workforce, Stomski said. “We are removing unnecessary barriers and providing access to a broader and more diverse talent pool,” she said. “One of those barriers is degree requirements. If we move to an either-or strategy, we will significantly expand our candidate pool to a more diverse group that reflects the communities we serve.” It can be opened up.”
Colleen Ammerman, director of the Race, Gender and Equity Initiative at Harvard Business School, said talent management strategies like Walmart’s avoid trying to randomly increase numerical targets. . “It would be wise for companies to think about how to access the best talent without putting up arbitrary barriers, whether that be through crude selection tools or more subtle barriers around people’s perceptions. , have different identities,” she said.
Ultimately, Stomski said, Walmart’s revamped hiring process will “unlock the potential of many of our people.” [front line and corporate] It allows employees to build their careers and get higher-paying jobs, thereby saving money and living a better life. It will have a positive impact on everyone’s practice. ”
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