The Walmart global diversity and inclusion (D&I) effort sets the standard high with its impressive array of strategies. Senior Director Donald Fan shares some of the successes and challenges of making D&I a global core value that comes to life through special events, programs, and expert use of technology.
— By Peter Scott
Walmart recognized the importance of diversity many years ago when it formally established the Office of Diversity in 2003. Since then, the Office of Diversity has significantly expanded as Walmart extended its reach and influence around the globe, and Donald Fan has been there for the entire journey. As the senior director of what is now the Global Office of Culture, Diversity & Inclusion (CDI), he has been responsible for leading a variety of functions and initiatives, at different times, that include strategy development, programs, communications, research, analytics, associate resource groups, and community relations.
His myriad responsibilities reflect Walmart's well-designed, thorough, and thoughtful effort to advance equity, fairness, and justice in the company's ecosystem. Walmart puts top leadership support and resources behind the global diversity and inclusion (D&I) activities designed to make the brand a leader in the D&I space.
What has resulted is a breathtaking array of programs, events, initiatives and analytics all with one purpose: Foster a workplace culture where everyone is and feels included.
The Global Office has four guiding principles that shape everything the team designs, develops and implements: Objectivity, transparency, data-driven decisions and accountability. The strategic objectives are to activate the culture; integrate culture, diversity and inclusion principles in every facet of the associate life cycle from recruitment to retirement; build an inclusive brand; and modernize measures by utilizing scoreboards and dashboards to track key performance indicators (KPIs) on D&I to inform action plans.
The Global Office of Culture, Diversity & Inclusion (CDI) is under the HR leadership umbrella, making HR leaders and D&I leaders, like Donald Fan, strategic partners working together to advocate, support, and champion CDI efforts.
Donald Fan came to the U.S. from Shanghai, China, to complete graduate studies and ended up staying after starting a Walmart career in the IT function, Information System Division. Bringing a technical background to his current position has enabled him to incorporate data and new technologies into the D&I space. This has been instrumental in Walmart's ability to become a D&I leader.
"What sets apart a better leader is the ability to see the same data as others but make different conclusions and gain different insights from it. Data-driven decision-making enables that ability," Donald Fan said.
Descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics are generated to help uncover the truth of D&I and identify patterns. The analytics are used to develop KPIs that drive behavioral changes and are aligned with business objectives and talent strategy.
Using the KPIs, a D&I scorecard is developed for each business unit and has a diversity section and an inclusion section.
"The CDI Scorecard is used to hold senior executives accountable in leading and advancing D&I," Donald Fan explains. "It is a tool that provides a state of the union snapshot of the unit, scored and reported against its own baseline. There is not a one-size-fits-all scale."
The CDI leadership dashboard offers transparency, clear visibility, and trending indicators about the business unit's talent pipeline and talent movement. The leadership dashboard is updated monthly to offer a holistic picture of the workforce mix, advancement, mobility, turnover at each management level (entry, mid, senior and corporate officer), and a five-year mobility trend.
To ensure sustainable progress, the Chief Officer of Culture, Diversity & Inclusion Ben Hasan meets regularly with each of the Walmart CEO's direct reports and their respective HR leads to communicate analytics results, relevancy to business objectives, blind spots and insights, and to ideate and brainstorm actions needed to overcome challenges.
Tools of D&I
Walmart's D&I program consists of a plethora of strategies, implementation and execution plans, and various tools like the scorecards and leadership dashboards.
A customized action plan helps each business unit translate the data story and intelligence into actionable effort and iteration to tackle current challenges. Donald describes it as a template that leaders can use for better understanding a D&I gap and the gap's impact on the overall objective; developing programmatic effort for course correction; and determining how to measure success.
Strategic initiatives are at the core of maintaining D&I progress. There are too many to name, but each initiative has a specific purpose.
For example, the Catalyst “MARC (Men Advocating Real Change) Leaders Workshop” helps executives and managers sharpen awareness of inequality, develop critical inclusive leadership strategies, and hone skills to make a lasting impact. It helps participants better understand the dynamics of privilege and how awareness by majority groups about the presence and effects of privilege could create a more inclusive environment.
“Racial Equity Training” (REI) educates the workforce on the issues through a history and systematic lens and teaches what each person can do to turn around the challenge. REI is built on the idea that the challenges society needs to address go far beyond the individual or the environment to the systems the individual and the environment occupy.
"Addressing only individuals and their environments without addressing the systems that individuals and environments occupy will only bring temporary improvement," Donald explains.
There is a “#YourStoryIsOurStory video library” that hosts associates' stories for purposes of exchange and to help others learn from their unique experiences, perspectives, observations, and concerns.
The CDI toolbox facilitates field and HO managers and team leads to leverage curated content to carry on CDI conversations at their regular business meetings. The American Dreams Game engages a small group of associates to play the board game and learn what the workplace CDI issues are and how to handle them in an inclusive manner.
Commitment From the Top
None of Walmart's D&I success would be possible without top leadership support. Walmart President & CEO Doug McMillon made three national commitments to hold the company accountable in achieving gender and racial parity in the workplace. They are Paradigm for Parity, Catalyst CEO Champions for Change, and CEO's Action for Diversity.
Walmart has inclusive leadership expectations that do not end at senior management levels.
McMillon regularly reviews and tracks diversity and inclusion status with his direct reports and leads the President's Inclusion Council. To help his direct reports and senior executives gain a deeper understanding of the experiences of African-Americans and civil rights history, he personally led a two-day tour of historic sites in Montgomery, Ala., to learn about racial challenges in the past and present.
This level of active top executive involvement in D&I is uncommon. The CEO not only is personally involved; he expects his direct reports to also be fully involved. Each direct report serves as an executive sponsor for an associate resource group. The chief officer of CDI regularly reports to the board on the challenges, status, and strategic plans for tackling the challenges. For CEO McMillon, it is just a matter of every Walmart associate in every position living out the values of respect for the individual.
Training Associates
Walmart has inclusive leadership expectations that do not end at senior management levels. The next generation of leaders must develop and demonstrate an evolved and ever evolving set of characteristics to achieve both business results and personal career growth.
Currently, more than 77,000 associates have inclusive leadership expectations as part of their annual performance evaluation. Expectations include activities like participating in D&I education and training opportunities and actively mentoring two associates. Managers at all levels are held accountable through goal setting and measuring goals.
New associates complete a thorough onboarding process, and associate resource groups play an important role. Donald offers the example of the C.O.M.P.A.S.S program.
"The C.O.M.P.A.S.S. program – which stands for Connect, Own, Mentor, Perform, Accelerate, Support and Sponsor – is developed and led by the African American Officers Caucus (AAOC) and the African American Business Resource Group (AABRG). It consists of monthly sessions focused on different business topics pertinent to helping new associates onboard and advance their careers at Walmart," Donald said of this year-long program for associates with less than two years of experience.
Another example of a group active in the associate onboarding process is the Padrinos Program of the Hispanic Latino Associate Resource Group (HLARG).
In both of these examples, the programs prepare new associates for their careers at Walmart by focusing on core competencies, including cultural awareness, building relationships, influencing and communicating, and retail business perspectives. This is just a sample of the innovative approaches to educate associates and advocate for open conversations to build a trust-based inclusive environment.
Walmart is also addressing unconscious bias by requiring all managers, including recruiters and hiring managers, to attend training sessions. The company is currently piloting 50 Ways to Fight Bias that is hosted by the Lean In organization. It serves as follow-up training on unconscious bias
There is also a CDI toolbox that offers team leaders and managers specific learning materials and sound-bite messaging for carrying on conversations.
In addition, the Global Office explores leading-edge virtual reality solutions that offer high-quality reality modules for training purposes and gamification techniques.
Motivating and Inspiring All
Every D&I effort has challenges, and Walmart is no different.
"Our key challenge is motivating and inspiring everyone in the workforce to believe in and champion D&I from their head, heart, and hands. We want to make D&I a dynamic part of the business DNA," Donald said.
The Global Office's approach to delivering a D&I solution is not traditional. The company leverages design thinking in developing D&I products.
Design thinking promotes the "Minimum Viable Product" principle in which an approach should deliver the greatest value while cutting the product development cycle. Application of this principle in the D&I space includes a revamped mentoring program with MentorMatch system, a mentoring platform, and a content library.
Mi Futuro was launched in 2009 and is one of Walmart's signature community engagement programs. The vision of this Hispanic Latino Associate Resource Group, is a curriculum of monthly activities for at-risk youth that was initiated in Walmart's home community in northwest Arkansas but now reaches 40 schools across 30 states.
There is so much more to mention. Walmart's D&I reach stretches around the world. Walmart China holds the annual China Women & Inclusion Forum. Walmart Sin Barreras (Walmart Without Barriers) is a D&I campaign in Central America. Walmart India has been recognized as one of the "100 Best Companies for Women in India" for two consecutive years. Walmart Japan held its first LGBTQ event in October 2018.
Whatever it Takes
From everyday conversations to sophisticated technologies, CDI is a leader in the D&I space in every aspect of its efforts.
"Walmart's leadership supports doing whatever it takes to foster a workplace culture where everyone feels included so that everyone wins, and everyone provides better service to customers," Donald said.
At Walmart, everyone is expected to support the vision of an inclusive workplace, and leaders like Donald are there to drive success through innovative approaches, the embracing of technology, and relationship building. It is a formula that already works exceedingly well.