STORES 2017 BIG Show Daily - January 16, 2017 - 6

2017 MONDAY

Walmart's View on Retail's Role in Society

n a presentation Sunday afternoon,
Kathleen McLaughlin, who holds
the dual roles of chief sustainability
officer of Walmart and president of the
Walmart Foundation, announced a $2
million grant to the National Retail Federation for its Fundamentals of Retail
training/credentialing program, developed as part of NRF's RISE Up initiative
to offer credentials and training to help
entry-level job seekers build meaningful
retail careers.
Walmart also announced a $2.9 million grant to the League for Innovation in
the Community College for curriculum
development, aimed at the same goals.
This, McLaughlin noted, is part of
Walmart's ongoing commitment to alter
the way business is done and evaluated
in today's world. Fortune, she said, now
publishes a new listing, "Top 50 Companies that are Changing the World."
Walmart has been high on every list, most
recently for its initiative to create economic opportunity for all its stakeholders.
"I started my career at McKinsey &
Company in 1990," said McLaughlin.
"All through the '90s, when I was consulting to clients in any sector, it didn't matter
what the project was. The end goal was
always shareholder value."

At the same time, she said, concepts
about balancing the interests of multiple
parties as the objective function of business, which had been kicking around in
academia, began to seep into the business
mainstream. "Today, the leading companies are now recognizing that business
needs to strengthen the systems we rely on
in a fundamental way. I offer you a simple
proposition," McLaughlin said. "Business
exists to serve society."
At Walmart, the transition to this point
of view gained serious momentum in the
fall of 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina. The storm, considered the most
expensive natural disaster in U.S. history,
devastated communities along the Gulf
Coast from central Florida to east Texas.
In the wake of poorly executed state and
federal disaster-relief efforts, Walmart
found itself in the position of de facto first
responder, rushing staples like water, fuel
and toilet paper to thousands of refugees.
In the first days after the storm, the
company contributed $20 million in
cash donations, 1,500 truckloads of free
merchandise, food for 100,000 meals and
the promise of a job for every one of its
displaced workers.
"That had a really profound effect on
the leadership of Walmart - Lee Scott Jr.,

who was CEO at the time, in particular,"
McLaughlin said. "He began asking,
'What if we were that company every
day?' and he really started to reflect on
the environment and how we can create a
more sustainable model of consumption."
Later that fall, Scott delivered a
speech to the company in which he set
out some goals for Walmart around sustainability: to be powered 100 percent by
renewable energy, to generate zero waste
and overall to have more sustainable
products.
One item on Walmart's agenda is
providing economic opportunity, which
the company is pursuing in several ways.
One has to do with its own 2.3 million employees: Entry-level employees now come
on at $9 per hour, and move up to $10 at
the completion of an introductory training
program, usually within six months.
"How do we get you from that to a
middle skills job? Training and education," McLaughlin said, which can involve anything from online GED or college courses to extensive on-the-job training. Noting that Walmart store managers
earn an average of $170,000 per year,
"75 percent of our store managers started
out as hourly people," she said. "Doug
McMillon, our CEO, himself started out

Stop drowning your people in useless reports

Kathleen McLaughlin

unloading boxes in a distribution center."
Again, McLaughlin emphasized
that Walmart's commitment to economic
opportunity, as with its initiatives in sustainability and community well-being,
arises not from an impulse to do good
so much as an evolved understanding of
what constitutes a business's self-interest.
"We can create business and social impact
simultaneously," she concluded, offering
an invitation to the entire industry to share
her company's view of today's world.

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NRF Booth #1427

STORES 2017 BIG Show Daily - January 16, 2017

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