CEOs aren’t shying away from what labor market experts have been saying for months: AI is transforming the workforce.
Yet as AI automates some tasks for Walmart workers, that won’t translate to mass layoffs.
“Our goal is to create the opportunity for everybody to make it to the other side,” McMillon said. Some jobs and tasks at Walmart will be eliminated, but others will be added, he added.
Walmart plans to maintain a head count of around 2.1 million workers across the world over the next three years, though the mix of these jobs are expected to change, Walmart’s chief people officer Donna Morris said, according to The Journal.
To help determine how to train and prepare workers, the company is tracking job types to see which increase, decrease and hold steady.
The headcount retention is a stark distinction from other corporate messaging recently.
It’s unclear how AI will change Walmart’s labor force in three years. Chief people officer Morris said company leaders have to do their “homework” to find those answers.
But according to Walmart’s CEO, the company will continue relying on face-to-face interaction even as it leans more on AI.
Other vendors have also offered robot workers to the company. Yet “until we’re serving humanoid robots and they have the ability to spend money, we’re serving people,” McMillon said. “We are going to put people in front of people.”
