The JUST Report: How A People-First AI Strategy Is Powering Walmart Forward
Ten years ago, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon made a bet that flew in the face of conventional retail wisdom: invest heavily in frontline workers through higher wages, better training, and expanded benefits. The result was increased value for the company, shareholders, and their associates. JUST’s analysis frequently highlighted this. This week, in a powerful LinkedIn reflection and in remarks from the company’s workforce conference in Bentonville, McMillon connected that decade-long commitment to how the company plans to navigate AI-related transformation.
The timing is striking. Headlines have focused on AI-driven job cuts, and McMillon himself acknowledged that “AI is going to change literally every job”. But he’s using this moment to double down on the philosophy that got Walmart here: “investing in wages, benefits, and education shouldn’t be seen as a line item, it should be valued as the strategic enabler that it is.”
This approach aligns perfectly with what the majority of Americans want. Worker issues such as fair pay, well-being, and training and advancement consistently rank as top priorities in our polling. And our data supports the business case: since 2021, companies excelling on worker issues in our rankings have outperformed the Russell 1000 equally-weighted index by over 20%. McMillon noted that Walmart’s shareholder returns are up about 490% since 2015, outperforming the S&P500.
Behind fair wages, the #2 issue for the American public this year was ethical leadership. McMillon’s remarks may offer the blueprint for ethical leadership in the AI era. He didn’t sugarcoat the challenge. AI will eliminate some jobs and create others. He outlined that the composition of Walmart’s 2.1 million-person workforce will change dramatically over the next three years, even as headcount stays flat. That transparency builds trust.
As we work over the next few months to begin to define what just AI deployment looks like, Walmart’s strategy is an exciting place to start.
Be well,
Martin
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QUOTE OF THE WEEK
(Getty Images/Bill Pugliano)
“Old-timers in our plants were saying, ‘It’s no longer a career, Mr. Farley. Working at Ford is no longer a career.’”
- Ford CEO Jim Farley speaking about employee feedback that inspired the company to pay “full wages” to entry level workers and invest in trade schools to stop “blue collar erosion”.
JUST AI
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang is encouraging Gen Z to go to trade schools, stating that the AI future will require “hundreds of thousands” electricians, carpenters, and plumbers to help build data centers and AI infrastructure. Fortune has the story.
The Wall Street Journal asks when we will see results of the “epic” levels of AI spending, citing worries many investors have that there is no clear timeline for when they’d see any return, echoing the dotcom bubble.
The New York Times reports that California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a sweeping new AI law that will force companies to report the safety protocols they’re using in development, the greatest risks posed by their technologies, and more.
MUST READS
Fortune reveals that 62% of white collar workers would transition to a trade job if it meant more employment stability and better pay, particularly for younger workers.
The New York Times takes a deeper look at the ways in which the Trump Administration could solve issues with the H-1B program and argues that the proposed $100k fee per new hire is not the solution.
Bloomberg worries that large swaths of Americans no longer have meaningful spending power to impact the economy, which is why stocks continue to grow despite American sentiment being down on the current state of the economy.
Nearly 100,000 government workers resigned this week as part of the Trump administration’s “Deferred Resignation Program” implemented in April of this year, which claims to save taxpayers $28 billion dollars. Newsweek has the story.
CHART OF THE WEEK
Pew Research released several pieces of data on how Americans are using AI. One important insight for company leaders? Most Americans believe it’s important to tell the difference between AI- and human-generated content, but very few feel like they can.
