Walmart's annual report on diversity and inclusion at the company shows where it made progress in the past year and where it needs to "lean in."
Donna Morris, Walmart's chief people officer, said in the company's Culture, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion report for fiscal 2023, released Wednesday, that it "summarizes our collective efforts and progress to create a culture of belonging at Walmart."
"We remain committed to reporting key data about our representation twice a year," Morris said, "and believe this transparency helps us better understand where we need to focus -- and enables our stakeholders, community and associates to help us move forward as we keep making progress."
The report also introduced Denise Malloy, Walmart's first chief belonging officer. The position expands the previous role of chief global culture, diversity, equity and inclusion officer, last held by Ben-Saba Hasan from July 2015 until he retired in July 2022.
Malloy started her new job on April 14. The company said she will work closely with employee resource groups, officer caucus leadership teams, shared value networks and the Walmart president's inclusion council.
Malloy said in a blog post introducing the annual report that officer representation in the United States for women and people of color is at the highest level since 2020. Representation for international women in management "is trending upward," she said.
[DOCUMENT: Read Walmart's report on diversity » arkansasonline.com/421cdei23/]
"Asian and Hispanic representation is up year to date across the board," Malloy said, "and the makeup of our new-hire population is becoming increasingly diverse."
Some of the demographics in the report are represented in charts. One showed that the percentage of U.S women of color in management positions grew to 18.07% in 2022 from 17.85% since the last report in October.
However, the percentage of U.S. women of color in officer positions dropped to 9.87% in 2022 from 10.29% in October. The percentage of all U.S. women in hourly and management positions slipped compared to the previous year, but the percentage of those in officer roles grew modestly to 36.75% from 36.38%.
Internationally, the percentage of female officers fell to 32.14% from 35.96% the year before.
Walmart currently employs 1.58 million workers in the U.S. and 481,956 in international markets, for total worldwide of 2.06 million. As of October, the Bentonville-based retailer employed 2.22 million workers worldwide.
Some of Walmart's education initiatives to foster inclusion in the workplace include a two-day Racial Equity Institute workshop that its U.S.-based officers must attend. Walmart also has a self-paced race and inclusion curriculum that all its U.S. employees can access.