Bijal Shah, Chief Experience Officer and Head of Platform, Guild Education
Lorraine “Lo” Stomski, Senior Vice President, Associate Learning and Leadership, Walmart 
Interviewer: Alexandra Sternlicht, FORTUNE 

MPW Next Gen 2022 - The New Learning Marketplace

Conferences

Bijal Shah, Guild Education
Lorraine “Lo” Stomski, Walmart 
Alexandra Sternlicht, FORTUNE 

MPW Next Gen 2022 - The New Learning Marketplace


All right next up a new view on education facing the tightest labor labor market in decades and a growing skill shortage companies are learning the benefits of investing in the education and re skilling of their employees. We're about to hear from two women in the know about up skilling today's workforce, bijal Shah is the chief experience officer and head of platform at guild education, an education startup that connects higher ed programs with workers at corporations like Disney, walmart and Chipotle. Lorraine chomsky is senior vice president of associate learning and leadership at walmart, the company that sits at the top of our Fortune 500 list. They're joining us today for a conversation with Fortune tech reporter, Alexandra Stern lick. Please join me in welcoming them to the stage. Yeah. Um thank you so much for that intro Terry. I'm so excited to be here and be joined by beagle and low. We are going to try and take audience questions today. So, um think about that for my lovely panelists. So low Amazon announced that it's laying off 10,000 employees. We've seen similar reductions in force from other Fortune 500 companies as the Fortune One company. How did the investment that you've made into employees education via guild of fact, your layoff and recession strategy. Uh this is a great opening question. So, uh, well, did anybody listen to the walmart earnings call today? Nobody listened, but it was a good call today. So I'm very happy. It was a good call, but um, walmart is um we have really made a decision in investment. Last year we announced that we are investing a billion dollars um, in our education training and learning over the next five years and we are not wavering off of that. So we truly believe for those of you who don't know walmart, we are Yes, Fortune one, but we have 2.3 million associates across the globe, which is, yeah, it's massive. Yeah, just a few um, massive scale. And really for our education programs, we made another strategic decision to very much lean into our frontline workforce, um, and provide them access to opportunity and opportunity is education. It's a way that they can create a career and a pathway for themselves. So, um, we are very committed to that billion dollar investment and that does not waver. That's good to hear. So, and beat all, you know, guilt is one of the largest female funded, um, you know, I would say start up, it's no longer startup, it's got a $4.4 billion valuation, 643 million in funding from investors ranging from Oprah Winfrey to general catalyst um, per pitchbook as an enormous venture funded company or are you feeling any sort of squeeze either? Um, you know, it's always important for us to be mindful of how we spend the funding that we've received and our mission and our purpose is to drive um impact and economic opportunity for America's workforce. And so we are very much focused on that mission and ensuring that we're investing in the right things to make that happen. So in this time of economic tightening classes get dropped, how will you accommodate um, the needs of associate students who are grappling with the demands of hourly labor, childcare at home and then also getting degrees. Yeah, I can start. Um, we spend a lot of time. Low mentioned this in a panel that she was on earlier. Um, we understand the adult learner really well and how that correlates to being also a worker. Um, you're an adult learning worker and we spend a lot of time think about the resources and investments we need to make for that worker outside of just providing them educational programming and opportunities. And so, um, we provide things like coaching support to ensure that our members and our learners have access to someone to talk to. Um, and the ability to get the support they need to continue to try and balance their work lives with their education lives at the end of the day. Um, and I don't think that you can just do one part of it, which is throw out a set of programs and say great have at it. Um, I think that individuals need support, they need coaching. They need guidance either through the product or through our services in order to find the right opportunities and to really design a path that is for them, um, that they believe can happen and our partnership with guild was really important for us to help our front line associates because we've you live better you and for those of you who may be asking yourself live better you, where did that come from? Our purpose at walmart is to help people save money so they can live better so thus live better. You, we have become the largest up skilling platform. And what's unique about our partnership is that, you know, we piloted this um it's debt free education. So on day one, whether you are full time or part time associate um in the stores, you can sign up for L. B. U. And by the way it's not just about college credentials, we could have a whole other conversation about that. It's also available for India who want to um complete their high school education english as a second language. Um you can get a bachelor's degree but you can also go through a short form program. We took a look at that portfolio over the last couple of years and said Um how do we future proof our workforce, what are the skills and capabilities that we need for the future? We actually really curated um the offerings so that it aligned with that because we know where the future was going. So we have both a short term um focus but we're also trying to build the workforce for the future to sustain Walmart were 60 years old uh this year and we want to be around for another 100 60. Well, I think the signs are pointing to that, um the average skilled student is a 33 year old black woman, that is not the average student anywhere. Um Can you talk about the education needs of this population and how it's different from regular students and how you're servicing these learners? Yeah, I mean just uh you know, there's like a few things to think about the first is that they need more flexibility um than traditional education provides. They don't have the ability to um go to school between eight and five every day. Um Their schedules require the ability to have more modularity in them. Uh They are working during the daytime, sometimes at night, and so the ability to shift what that looks like is really important. They also are we have a lot of caretakers um and folks who are not only responsible for providing for themselves, but maybe for their families, either their Children or even seniors um in their household. And so making sure that we are ensuring that we provide that flexibility so that we fit into where they are and where they need to go. And the best way for for us to be able to do that is to ensure that our learning programs in our marketplace at the end of the day, cater to the adult working learner and that we provide flexible coursework, whether it's shorter form or longer form that we meet you where you are. So whether you need to finish your high school diploma or you're looking to get a cyber security certificate. We want to make sure we're covering the gamut of what our members need and ensuring that we're meeting them where they are. I'd love to open the floor now to audience questions. Does anyone have anything that they'd like to ask the panelists? That is absolutely fine. Um, because I have lots of questions for you guys. Um, so some critics of guild say that the programs um, enable low wages at corporation by and prevent workers from perhaps affording college or degrees. Otherwise, what do you say to that? I believe we need a new model for how we think about helping folks go back to school and I think career aligned programming is really essential and I believe that we're providing access and opportunity to a bunch of individuals who wouldn't have it otherwise. Um, when you think about the impact we're driving as well, low can talk about this a little bit more, but we are driving an increase in promotion rate, um, to new roles as well, A 2.4% or 32.4 times likelihood that someone will actually see a salary change and a salary increase. Um, once they participate in educational programming and our career opportunity platform. And so I think we can show the real impact with the data of what we're driving and I also believe that at the end of the day we have a responsibility to provide this type of opportunity to America's workforce and this year alone you have provided that opportunity to somewhere near 200,000. Um Associates of stores like walmart, Chipotle, like Disney and so on. Um in walmart alone you've had 100 89,000 walmart associates have enrolled in guild guild education programs Um which is an enormous amount of people, I mean that is just so large. Um 15,000 of these have graduated and 100 have shifted into corporate roles. Um that is again an enormous amount of people who are getting educated, who might not have ever been able to have this type of access if they didn't work at Walmart that said, you know that 89,000 to 15,000 is a big drop in my opinion. Um and you know, only 100 or in corporate jobs, so that seems kind of low, am I wrong? Can you talk a little bit about, I don't, I don't think corporate roles is the end, you know, is the end goal, It's about mobility opportunity to move into different jobs. We've had actually 5300 promotions and lateral transfers um so far with lb, you remember, were we started in 2018, so if you think about the adult learner in the time it takes to graduate and get a credential takes time. So 15,000. We actually um we actually really targeted 10, 10,000. We exceeded that to 15. Um We also did something really interesting last year which was, we started off by, It was a dollar a day. We wanted skin in the game for associates on day one again part time full time sign up. It will cost you a dollar a day. What we realized was that a dollar a day was a lot for many associates. We removed that we had a 66% jump in participation in L. Bu so remember on again on day one it costs nothing. This is not a tuition reimbursement, it's actually at no cost from day one. So those are the kind of things that we're doing. Um and we have, I mean obviously tons of, tons of stories um personal stories about people that are actually changed their world. We had associate Darren Robertson I talked about last time, but she's a great story about what's going on in this country which is, she started off as an hourly cashier. She like many of us, you know went right from high school to college and she started to accumulate debt life happened and she went through this process of like stopping and starting and it got to a point where she was like, I don't even know if college is for me and so when lb you came to life, she actually enrolled, she has her bachelor's degree and um she is now, she applied for, she was in an internship at our corporate office, our home office and she just landed a job as a, as a project analyst. So those are the stories, those are multiplier effects that we are going to continue to see and just to cover some stats. So an average adult learner takes eight years to complete a degree um to the point low made and um given where the walmart program is in particular, we have not hit eight years. Um and so I think it's really important to put the numbers that you have in context. The other thing I will tell you is that 70% we do a study, it's called the american worker Study. Um we pull a set a representative of the United States and get a better understanding of what their needs are. And one of the things that's really important to American workers, 70% of them say that they would like to stay at their current employer and they see themselves in 2-5 years. The biggest barrier to that is seeing opportunity. And so to lowest point, it's not about getting in into a corporate job, it's about helping you see the possibilities of where you could go next creating pathways so that you can actually embark on those opportunities so that over time you can see their career progression, you'd love to see at the employer that you're at and in fact, some of the other data points just to illustrate the power of this kind of program. We actually um did some analysis and r. L. Bu students are promoted at twice the rate of their colleagues and they leave four times less rate than their their colleagues. So there's a lot of stickiness there. Um People want to learn, they want to grow and I think this became really magnified during the pandemic when um we were, many of us were at home, our associates were the front line providing goods and services to all of you in this room. Hopefully that's that's the power of the program. Well, yeah, I mean it sounds very powerful. There's a lot of talk to about the evolving role of education and what it means, you know, um is the high, like what sort of disruption in the higher ed model for um students who get degrees, that actually means something to them. Can you guys talk about the role of evolving education and changing, You know, these sort of stodgy institutions that have existed for a very Long time. I'd love to share my I get very passionate about our, okay, I'll go check, we're in the same mindset, our vision at Walmart, we are obviously a microcosm of America 90% of you in this room live within 10 miles of a walmart. It is fully our belief that we are in a position where we can change what it means, what education means in this country. Um so I'm very excited about that possibility. I mean with all of the programs that we're offering pathways to an access opportunity, I think we have that um that opportunity and I agree with you that with the education system is very updated in this country. I also, just from a content perspective, you do see a shift. If you think about the content, you consume yourself, um we are getting to a place where people want to consume content and shorter forms and this is why shorter form programming is really important in terms of short form certifications, et cetera. That said, I do think we have a ton of work to do even across the workforce um to make sure we're make the shifts in the right way and I believe there's still power in the degree and so figuring out how those certifications can ladder up to a degree is something that's really important. Um I think that guilt and when we think about the role that we play, um in terms of making sure people are thinking about the long term while they're seeing short term game awesome. Well, the Tiktok ification of education, I like it. I know we have an audience question in the front row, if you could say your name to that would be great. Our employer is urgent. So many different types of how employers are thinking about new contemporary types of benefits that can be more flexible to match these of your employers, giving up your employees and your and your team and how that changes over time. Do you view guild primarily as an employee benefit? Do you view it as a professional development investment? I'm curious to hear how you view it in that landscape and when you're thinking about your overall benefit strategy, there also are things like insurance, there is fertility benefits, there are mental health, there are all sorts of contemporary benefits. And I'd love to just hear how you think about guilt in that context. So I'll just say I'm the learning expert so I won't begin to opine on those other areas. But what I would say about our partnership with guild is that they are our strategic partner in our upscaling strategy to prepare our associates for the workforce of the future. So the way that I look at learning within walmart is that we are preparing people through our walmart academy which is um you know our learning our learning teams for jobs that they're in today lb you is part of that and our partnership with guild is part of our um upscaling strategy to prepare our folks for the future. And then the third prong which we talked about earlier today is just the critical role that our managers have and developing and growing our talent. So we've leaned extremely heavily um into um upscaling our managers and preparing them for that, so that's, that's just from a learning perspective and one thing just to add on from a strategic perspective, um not only do we think about the program we offer in our programs we offer in our marketplace as part of the value, but the other thing that we help walmart do and other employers do is to take the on the job training that is happening and actually help translate it into credit for school. Um and so we spend it, we call it credit for X or credit for work um in this case, and that is an important part of what we do to help tie in because we believe that the learning you do on the job is equally, or maybe even sometimes more valuable than the learning that you might do in a classroom or on a zoom and we think it's really important that that gets incorporated into how we think about um designing the right pathways and programs for members and learners. So we're really out of time here, but in closing really quickly, um a lot of people in the room are, you know, either executives at large companies or they're looking to partner with large companies like walmart and guild, what do you see for the future of partnerships between large scale startups and large companies in the weeks and months to come as the economy continues to do a lot of things, I think it's uh, this may sound a little cliche, but you know, at walmart, we strongly believe that our people do make the difference. That goes back to our founder, Sam Walton. He was, you know, a treasure trove of quotes and he always talked about, you know, find great associates and you know, train them. They will be associates for life, we believe and were very different from a lot of other organizations that shall remain nameless. But we actually want our folks, our associates to stay with us. We want to build that career path with them. And I think you said it well in the research study, that that's what that's what people are looking for now. So unfortunately, that is all we have time for on a very tight schedule. But thank you so much. Thank you.