Walmart is championing compassionate leadership practices among its store managers, mirroring a broader trend across corporate America, The New York Times reported March 12.
Nearly every week, the nation's largest private employer flies about 50 managers to its headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., for leadership training.
The leadership academy, launched in July 2022, encourages managers to put people first and reinforces the notion that the company's success is tied to leaders taking care of their employees, customers and communities, according to the report.
"The intent of the academy is to walk away knowing what are our values, what are our expectations of leaders, how do we operate effectively with the view of putting our people first?" Donna Morris, Walmart's chief people officer, told the Times.
Last year, Walmart trained about 1,800 managers through the academy. This year, the company is on track to train about 2,200.
Walmart is not unique in this leadership objective. Over the last two years, U.S. companies have increasingly prioritized compassionate leadership, according to Jessica Kriegel, a workplace training consultant at Culture Partners.
"The big insight here is that employees feeling cared for is directly tied to communication," she told the Times. "And the folks who communicate the most with the front line are their supervisors. That's why frontline supervisors are so critical, because if they're communicating effectively then the workforce feels cared for."