Recently, Walmart China has once again been certified as “Top Employer 2024” by the Top Employers Institute.
This award is one of the most influential and leading annual reviews in the global human resources management field. It comprehensively evaluates companies with the best human resources practices with 20 sets of criteria in six major areas, encompassing people strategy, work environment, talent acquisition, learning, well-being, and diversity and inclusion. This year, Walmart's overall assessment score not only increased by 4 percentage compared to last year, but also exceeded the average score of more than 2,300 certified companies worldwide.
Christina Xiaojing Zhu, President and CEO of Walmart China, said: "Walmart's mission of ‘helping people save money so they can live better' is realized by the commitment of our associates. Walmart believes that our future depends on our associates. The Top Employer certification not only recognizes Walmart's employer brand but also helps us enhance our human resources practices, create an environment that offers opportunities and growth to our associates, foster a sense of belonging and happiness among our associates, and ultimately maximize their potential to better serve our customers and members."
This year's Top Employer certification results show that Walmart scored 100% in employee listening. Listening to associates was one of the ten business principles established by Walmart since its founding. Walmart has developed a systematic employee listening strategy, creating open and equal communication opportunities for associates and management through multiple channels such as CEO Afternoon Tea sessions, listening tours, grassroots meetings, and project-based pulse surveys. Walmart analyzes and assesses all the collected information to develop comprehensive improvement plans. This promotes the positive and continuous development of associates as well as the company, and therefore creating a better environment for both its workforce and customers alike.
Every year, Walmart conducts associate engagement surveys among global associates. In recent years, Walmart China’s survey results indicate an upward trend in employee satisfaction and recognition of the company, with significant improvements in the associate engagement score, integrity index, and willingness to stay. It's also worth mentioning that the net employee recommendation score has been rising, setting the best score in recent years in 2023, which demonstrates the willingness of employees to recommend others to work at Walmart, and is an important indicator for Walmart to measure internal employee satisfaction.
Maryann Xiaohong Xu, Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer of Walmart China, said: "Employees are Walmart's most cherished assets. Walmart will continue to invest in human resource development and optimize our talent development system. We will better our workplace to be open and inclusive, ensuring every associate can work in their best state and fulfill their personal worth and aspirations. Additionally, we aim to build a positive ecosystem for selecting, utilizing, nurturing, and retaining talented individuals within the company. This will help us create a trusted employer brand, attracting and retaining diverse talents while cultivating future retail leaders.”
Faced with the constantly changing and evolving retail market, Walmart proactively maps and cultivates future retail talent, continuously increasing the attraction and cultivation of outstanding college talents, and actively fostering a pipeline of future retail professionals. In 2023, Walmart entered 32 universities in 22 cities across the country, communicated closely with many university graduates, and let them experience Walmart's culture and values firsthand. The number of resumes received through Walmart's campus recruitment efforts grew by 85% over the same period.
Walmart China 2024 Campus Recruitment Online Seminar invites senior leaders to interact with students.
To empower employees, Walmart has developed training courses according to the tailored needs of new hires and associates at different levels. This customized training covers operations job learning maps, business competency training, leadership training, thus providing a broad platform for employees' vertical and horizontal career development. In addition, Walmart's digital mobile learning platform provides more than 3,000 online training courses. In 2023, Walmart China’s internal instructors almost doubled, and the average training time for associates increased by 48% compared to last year.
Furthermore, Walmart continues to invest in associate well-being, which showed a significant increase in the score of this year's Top Employer certification. In 2023, to enhance associates' sense of belonging and happiness, Walmart organized more than 3,000 diverse employee events nationwide, providing tens of thousands of associates and their families with comprehensive care for physical and psychological health, life services, and personalized needs.
Considering associates’ growing concern for health, Walmart has held numerous health seminars for associates nationwide and has set up health corners in stores across the country. Health corners are equipped with resources like blood pressure monitors and pulse oximeters, to allow employees to pay attention to their health status at any time; Walmart has also organized national walking events to encourage associates to develop the habit of exercise, attracting the active participation of more than 30,000 associates.
Walmart sets up health corners in stores nationwide, allowing associates to pay attention to their health status at any time.
In terms of corporate social responsibility, Walmart is committed to promoting community and environment sustainability, and has long supported the development of diverse groups such as women, children, and people with disabilities. Walmart not only promotes the construction of barrier-free facilities in stores and office areas, but also creates employment opportunities for people with disabilities, offering them different types of jobs. Walmart China has also launched the "Accessibility Support" barrier-free information platform to help associates with disabilities better connect with society, obtain relevant policy information, and expand their possibilities.
Moreover, Walmart China has encouraged associates to actively use the "Carbon Reduction at Hand" environmental protection mini-program, which was selected by the Top Employers Institute as one of the ten best practices in China. This endeavor not only effectively influences associates to create a green office environment, but also encourages associates to champion environmental stewardship; and it promotes the company’s longer-term sustainable development goals for Walmart to become a "regenerative" company.