More than 30 years into a career that had brought her to California and then Arkansas from her native Canada, Donna Morris could not have chosen a more challenging time to take on the role of chief people officer of Walmart. It was February 2020 — a couple of weeks before the coronavirus pandemic upended the world and laid bare an uncertain future for both workers and the retail industry.
Walmart perhaps had more reasons than anyone to worry about what the future would bring — the retailer is the largest private employer in the United States, with 1.6 million employees, representing a work force largely the size of Philadelphia.
“The first thing on our mind was, how do we secure the health and well-being of all of our associates?” Ms. Morris said recently, reflecting on that time. “How do we safeguard the well-being of our associates? And then I will also say: How do we safeguard the well-being of any customer or member that’s coming in?”
Walmart has a sprawling employee base that stretches across 4,600 Walmart stores, 600 Sam’s Club locations and soon a 350-acre campus being built in Bentonville, Ark., where the company has its headquarters. Its work force includes hourly workers without college degrees who restock store shelves, engineers who previously worked at Silicon Valley tech firms and longtime employees on the corporate track. Longevity at the company is something of a badge of honor — literally. Workers in Bentonville walk around the company’s offices with name tags stating how many years they have been an employee at Walmart.
Thus, Ms. Morris arrived as something of an anomaly among the executive ranks: an outside hire. Roughly 75 percent of the managers at Walmart started as hourly associates. After 17 years at the software provider Adobe, where Ms. Morris rose the ranks within its human resources department to eventually run it, an executive search firm reached out to her in early 2019 to see if she’d be interested in joining Walmart.
Four years into the job, Ms. Morris has overseen wage increases for workers at the company’s U.S. stores. Walmart says its average hourly wage has risen about 30 percent over the past five years, to close to $18 an hour. That’s a similar rate of wage growth for retail workers in the United States overall.
This year, Walmart has focused particularly on retaining store managers: The company announced in January that the average salary of a store manager would increase to $128,000 from $117,000, and with bonus potential and annual stock grant, pay could be pushed up to around $400,000 annually.
Even with these changes, Ms. Morris must contend with criticisms that Walmart still doesn’t do enough to protect the safety of its workers and compensate them adequately. Activist groups have in recent years called on the company to evaluate its policies after store workers had been hurt or died while on the job. Walmart has had to deal with a litany of lawsuits related to workers’ compensation — some as recently as this past week.
On Wednesday, the company agreed to pay $175,000 to settle three discrimination lawsuits brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In July, Walmart said it would pay $2.5 million to settle a class-action wage claim. And in March, Walmart agreed to pay $70,000 to settle another discrimination lawsuit brought by the E.E.O.C. A Walmart spokesman declined to comment on the lawsuits.
Ms. Morris sat down with The New York Times recently in Walmart’s Hoboken, N.J., office, where she shared the company’s hiring strategy, how it navigates the political landscape in Arkansas and why she posted on LinkedIn so frequently. The interview has been edited for space and clarity.
What made you decide to come to Walmart?
I love technology, and I could never see myself working for another tech company. That would have been like cheating to me. I had spent a long time with one software company, and it was like, no way I’m going to go and work for another software company. But the reality is, every company is a tech company. And Walmart was going through this amazing digital transformation.
“I think it’s fair to say that a company of our size and scale comes under scrutiny.” — Donna Morris
Who were some of your biggest influences growing up?
My mom because she was always learning new things. She was the type of individual where she was always striving to be better. My dad is just a fun-loving guy. He was kind to everybody. He always wants to make people happy. My dad was all about people and caring for people. I have a wonderful older brother. He’s always had the bar high for himself. He influenced me to go to university. He was always like, “Donna, you have to expect more for yourself.”
What about when you had started your career?
My first true leadership job, I was a vice president of human resources at a Canadian software company called Accelio, and the C.E.O. of the company had been C.E.O. of Xerox Canada. He was a really strong leader and he would call me Ms. D. He had a very charismatic, very big personality.
He’d be like, “Ms. D, you ready? I need to get some feedback.” We’d go to this hamburger spot called Harvey’s — it’s a Canada chain — and we’d sit there over burgers and he would be asking for feedback about the work force and he’d be giving me feedback. I was a young mom at that time, and the only female reporting to him. It was me and the men. Today, there’s usually many more women. But he showed empathy and care and belonging before I even knew what the word “belonging” was.
What are your hardest roles to fill?
I would say the absolute hardest to fill will always be leadership roles. We do have a great pipeline internally, but that’s always hard too, because if I give it to one person internally and not the other, there’s always those ramifications. Leadership roles are always something that we take a lot of time thinking about.
What is your pitch for coming to work in Bentonville?
I always describe Bentonville as your favorite Hallmark movie. We might not be really, really large in terms of size, but we’re diverse in terms of access.
Does the current political climate ever factor into these discussions? In 2019, the State of Arkansas passed a law that bans abortion at any time during a pregnancy, unless the woman’s life is endangered. And there is a push in the state’s legislature to ban critical race theory. What do you say to prospective employees who may be wary of moving to Bentonville.
For Walmart, we are really representing everybody. And we’re trying to provide the environment where everyone will feel welcome. I feel very comfortable saying that within Northwest Arkansas, we are striving to ensure that everyone can be their authentic self. But we’re not in control of everything that happens. What we can do is make sure that our associates feel like they’re supported when they’re working for Walmart, and make sure that they’re supported if they have medical needs that can’t be met where they’re at.
And what do you tell prospective employees with children who are worried about the school system?
We are fortunate — and let me call out the Walton family for doing so many investments in our area — but we’re very fortunate to have charter schools and private schools, and we really do have options for individuals. We strongly encourage associates to spend some time to get to know the schools and make the option that’s right for them between public or private.
In the early and mid-2000s — before your time at the company — Walmart faced criticism around how it treated workers. Critics said the company paid low wages and Walmart valued profit over people. I’m wondering, how much of your job do you feel is about changing that perception?
I think it’s fair to say that a company of our size and scale comes under scrutiny. It’s just a reality because people have perceptions of bigger companies. We have strived and really the credit goes to Doug [McMillon]; since he became C.E.O., he has been front and center, focused on our associates.
We want, most importantly, our associates to know that they’re valued and that we’re investing in them. And we would love for people to know that that’s what we do. I would love people to take the time to get to know who Walmart is today and who Walmart is striving to be as we look out into the future and we pay homage in so many ways to our past, including our purpose, which was given to us by Sam Walton. But like anybody’s personal history, there’s times that you’d say, “Hey, let’s not focus on our past, let’s focus on our present and our future.” And I think our present shows up really well in terms of how we’re focused on our associates.
You post a lot on LinkedIn, whether it’s about talking to the summer interns or about your latest family vacation. Why do you like it?
I am somebody who’s really accessible, and it’s really important to me that people know that an any point in time — good, bad, indifferent — they can approach me. I think the more that they get to know who I am, the more that they’re willing to do that. I’m just a real person trying to work and live my life like everybody else. And so, I like to really share my story so that it might help other people on whatever journey that they’re on. It’s a great way to get feedback on certain topics. I always check my LinkedIn messages because sometimes associates find you that way. Even though you’ve got email, they’ll find you that way. So I love LinkedIn.
The post How Walmart’s Donna Morris Manages the Largest Work Force in America appeared first on New York Times.
