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Upskilling for an AI-Ready Workforce with Walmart's Josh Allen | GSVtv Podcast
00:12:08
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
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Josh, thank you so much for joining us. We are super lucky to have you. You sit at the center of one of the most important questions in my opinion happening right now, which is how do you actually prepare the workforce for an AI driven world not just in theory but in practice. And I think your role at Walmart gives you an unprecedented seat in terms of reaching a lot of workers at scale. As we kind of mentioned, Walmart is making AI training available at a different level than most other at many other employers. But scale alone doesn't necessarily really create capability. So I want to start off by asking you how do you think about AI upskilling for the workforce as broad as Walmart? How do you think about creating workforce training for somebody who might sit at the very front line all the way to your managers, to your supply team chains?
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A
Yeah, you know, and I think the solution can be different but it can be pretty similar as well. And you mentioned the access we've given a certification so we're heavily promoting the new Google AI professional certificate we are building and kind of have been co creating a new AI certificate with OpenAI. So both of these certificates are available to all of our associates and kind of tool agnostic. We just want associates to learn AI. You know I think that's a, a piece of it though and it's really important piece. The, my favorite part about it is you, you don't have to admit that you don't know anything like when we give them access to these certificates. I, I have a associate on my team that's a 40 year associate, hadn't used AI. She was the first person to complete the new certificate. So part of the, the UAT testing and she came out with just this confidence that that wasn't there before. She can now have conversations, she can feel comfortable talking about a, that's what the certifications do but that's not it. So I mean you have to immediately practice it. I think you have to give access to tools, you have to kind of reinforce this in your organization if you really want it to stick.
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And in those certificates is there certain skills that you think are really critical for delivering?
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I think and actually one of the most important things is the ability to check AI. So I think actually one of the biggest barriers to adoption is when you ask a question it doesn't give you the answer you want. Either it's wrong or it's not in the format that you want. And I think what happens is, you know, and I think like the super early adopters were like this is really cool. They'd go in, they'd get something wrong and it would actually stop. And I know there's others and I've heard it a bunch of times where they're like, yeah, you know, I put it in and then it's 50% there and then I rewrite it and it takes them like an hour or two to rewrite whatever it gave them. So, you know, I think kind of getting them that critical ability to test the AI, getting them to correct it, you know, continue to use it, even if you get a response that's wrong, don't just stop. And I think the certificates do a pretty good job of teaching associates how to be critical with AI. Don't just take an answer that it gives to you because it can be confidently wrong sometimes.
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B
Yeah. I think a lot of what we discussed about AI is it's the jagged frontier of what's possible and that's constantly changing. And so I think to your getting that comfort level around testing where that frontier lies and then, and you know, continuing to push with it is a very critical skill going forward.
- [03:32]
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When I think going back to it, like if you've done something and it didn't work, the models continue to get better. So go back and try it again later, try it again a different way. And I think it's that comfortability with using AI that, that credentials and other things can do that, that really unlocks it.
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B
And ultimately what is this credential like help people to do? Is it a signaling at the end of the day of skills and capability? Is it something that is portable? Is it something that you should, you know, post up on one's LinkedIn?
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Yes, you know, all of the above really. So I, I think, and actually, you know, I've, I've talked about once through Google, once through OpenAI. At the end of the day, it's just how to use AI. So it's not, it's not really tool specific. I, I think it's, it's the application afterwards that's going to be the meaningful difference. So I think that's where the real skill comes from. But there are skills associated with it. We'll, we'll tag skills coming out of it and kind of track some of these things we'll want. Like this is postable on LinkedIn. We want, it is going to be portable. So the OpenAI one will be available and Google obviously is available through Coursera. These are available to associates in different companies and we want that to be portable. We want, you know, we obviously want Associates to stay with Walmart, but we want them to have something that they could take somewhere else and, and be kind of promotable other places.
- [04:52]
B
That's super cool. Another area I know that you've worked on a lot is thinking about how AI is changing the job itself and kind of the work redesign that's happening. Could you kind of talk about how you think training needs to evolve given the fact that roles and responsibilities are changing and the role that's particularly that learning and development plays in that within organizations?
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You know, I'll give an example of something my team did where, you know, we, we're responsible for Walmart Academy. So we train hundreds of thousands of associates a year in Walmart Academy. We'll do activities where. So these are actually located inside a Walmart supercenter. We do activities where we take associates out onto the floor, we'll give them a list of, of activities to do and then they come back and talk about it. Somebody from my team, kind of grassroots effort, built a custom GPT that you could take out on the floor with you take pictures and it will give you feedback and it'll give you really good feedback. So it has training materials, SOPs, everything loaded into it. You know, that's in the flow of work training. I mean, you can be out on the floor, take a picture, I can take a picture, you know, inside a supercenter or Sam's Club and it can give me feedback about what that's supposed to look like. These things were not possible, not even remotely possible previously.
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B
That's a really amazing example. And you said this is something that some created on the fly on, on their own. How much innovation are you guys seeing across the centers as you go through these academy?
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A
You know, a lot I think from, from my team, we have a number of, you know, these, these custom GPTs that are being built. Things like skills practice, taking our training materials and using AI to, to have it conversational. So I think we're seeing that, I think we're seeing it in associates. Across the board though, we have, you know, our own vibe coding platform that we use, encouraging associates to experiment. And I think ultimately that's where the unlock is, is giving associates the room to experiment. And I think Walmart's done a good job at that.
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B
And do you guys want to think about like, for these successes, all the, you know, all the iteration that's happening, scaling some of that beyond to the broader population? Are there any.
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Absolutely. And actually on the, the example I gave for the touring agent when operations saw it they were like we need to get this in the hands of all associates. So kind of working through what does that look like to, to scale it. And I think, I think many organizations are at that point right now where it's grassroots, it's great. But eventually you're going to have to kind of pick whatever cream of the crop comes up and then start to scale those solutions. But I think right now we're still at that experimentation phase.
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Is there anything that learnings from that experimentation phase around what companies might want to necessarily back away from or shy from? You know, things that are kind of just false steps that there's good luck.
- [07:34]
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You know, I think it's, there was a lot of, of tweaking that, that went into that, that touring just to make sure it's accurate. So you know, I think, and I wouldn't say shy away from, but don't just create something, assume it's going to work. They actually would take pictures from different angles and different, you know, all kinds of different scenarios to improve it. So I would say, you know, if you want it to be good, keep, keep iterating on it.
- [07:59]
B
And you mentioned this a little bit earlier, which is the career mobility. Can you talk about how you think about driving learning that helps people think through all this transition and change?
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And I think at the end of the day that's what Walmart is about. We have kind of an opportunity story from our senior leaders, often coming from hourly associates all the way up to CEO. And I'll give you one example where in the academy we've also redesigned a lot of our activities to rely on AI. So even at the hourly supervisor level they have access to a sandbox. They're going in to solve problems with AI. Ultimately, you know, kind of seeing into the future here, those, those skills that they're gaining are going to, to carry them through to you know, other management levels, other areas in the company. So you know, I think everything that we're doing is to build those skills to rise. And I think we're really looking at kind of targeted development paths of how do I move especially through the store and in club and DC ranks. How do I move associates from one level to the next and just make sure we have that pipeline.
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I think Walmart is obviously one of the largest organizations that's well known organizations, United States. What do you think others can really learn from what you guys have done?
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You know, I think it, it really comes down to three things and you know, I think it's, it's access. So just where you can give associates access to, to the tools, give them set expectations on, on how to use it, and then reinforcement. So, you know, I think at the end of the day, and I talked about the experimentation, but I think one of the things holding people back with AI, especially when you don't know about it, is you're afraid you're going to break it, that you're going to do something wrong. And I think it's, I think what we've done a really good job at is creating that opportunity for failure and learning from failure. And then moving forward, can you expand
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B
a little bit on how you created that kind of culture and environment? Because I think in a periods of high uncertainty, that is such a critical advantage. Right.
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You know, and I think across the board one of our themes is, is psychological safety. So we actually have this embedded into all of our leadership training. So we have a program called Manager Academy. We bring all facility leaders and nearly completed with this over the last three years, we've been bringing in store managers, market managers, GMs. We bring them in, we teach them about Walmart culture. And a heavy component of that is, you know, Mr. Sam's like swimming upstream. All of these things that he did, his ability to fail fast, to learn, to grow from that. We instill that in our culture and it comes from the top all the way to every associate.
- [10:55]
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I think that's one of the things that we hear a lot, which is a lot of the AI adoption. This is about human change management. The culture and the app being actually one of the top topics for a lot of leadership today. I. It's a wonderful aspect to hear that that's kind of the human aspects are still really critical even when it comes to new technologies.
- [11:18]
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And I think what we're doing is doubling down on, on the human skills through AI. So, you know, I look at something like communication. AI can help tremendously on communication, but it can, it can really bring out like what I was trying to communicate better things. Like I just love AI skills practice. So like mimicking having a difficult conversation, you can practice these, you can practice it with someone's personality like you're about to do it for. And so I think using that technology to make ourselves better at being humans is what I'm most excited about.
- [11:51]
B
Well, thank you again so much for coming, Josh. We really appreciate it. It's a unique opportunity for others to be able to learn from all the experimentation and progress that you guys have done at Walmart. Thanks again for joining.
- [12:02]
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Thank you.