Walmart Employee Excellence: Becoming More Agile At Scale

Walmart has a long-standing tradition of listening to associates, gathering feedback, and actively analyzing employee surveys. For years, Walmart has launched a global employee survey twice per year, stretching out the process from country to country. This process reaches 1.2 million U.S. associates and around 1 million non-U.S. associates across 13 different markets. The survey includes more than 40 questions and focuses on engagement, ethics, and other work-related content — providing standard feedback that any manager (home office or field) can use.

Working with Medallia, Walmart decided to speed up the process to better deploy a worldwide survey in a shorter period of time. This lets local country managers and team leaders make decisions rapidly, and ultimately lets Walmart create a more “real-time” feedback model. The prior process took months to roll out, so as world events changed, the data became less relevant. This new approach is designed to let Walmart survey, analyze, and act on data more quickly.

The team is now evaluating a more journey-driven process where they can survey employees during defined “moments that matter.” The team understands there are many employee experiences that matter so the new strategy will include a much more “open listening” process. Walmart does not want to “over-survey” employees, but now realizes it needs “instantaneous” feedback from surveys, open text, or chat. The company is piloting a more real-time system that would provide stores near instantaneous feedback for local action.