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Walmart (WMT), the nation's largest private employer, will start sharing its internal diversity stats twice a year instead of annually, in the midst of a searing national debate over equality.
In its first-ever mid-year diversity and inclusion (D&I) report covering fiscal years 2019 through 2021 year-to-date, the company has seen a 7.42% increase in management-to-management promotions for people of color. That cohort of employees now accounts for 44.6% of those promotions this year, according to Walmart data.
Elsewhere, the company also posted a 2.97% increase in officers of color, with 24.89% of those officer roles held by people of color. The company also saw a 2.2% increase in U.S. people of color new hires, now comprising 55.03% of new hires.
The objective is to provide a more “real-time” picture of the retailer's progress, Walmart's chief people officer Donna Morris told Yahoo Finance in a telephone interview.
The company’s move takes place against a backdrop of roiling social change sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minnesota police earlier this year, something Morris mentioned as partly motivating Walmart’s need to “really increase our transparency” and to bolster corporate accountability.
As the country’s biggest employer, “we felt we needed to do our part in a number of ways. One was to make sure we continued making progress on representation," Morris told Yahoo Finance.
"We want to make sure that in these reports we highlight progress and also highlight areas where we are going to continue to focus on improvement," Morris added.
‘Growth throughout our pipeline’
Of the company's total U.S. workforce, 54.92% are women, with 25.69% being women of color. Of the U.S.-based hourly associates, 55.66% are women, while 26.38% are women of color.
Women account for 45.71% of management roles in the U.S., while women of color hold 17.1% of those positions. The company's officer positions are held by 30.9% women, yet women of color have only 7.31% of those roles, the report shows.
"What we really want to see progress is growth throughout our pipeline,” Morris said, underscoring a desire to promote more Black, African American and Hispanic associates.
“We also have continued work to do on women and making sure that whether I speak of people of color or women, that we are really growing them within Walmart and that we are retaining them," Morris added.
One of the company's recent initiatives is a recently-implemented hiring protocol where Walmart posts all open positions at or below the vice president level internally.