Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, anticipates to introduce “several hundred new roles” across the US and India, which will also be open to recently laid-off employees, a top company executive told Moneycontrol.
"We anticipate several hundred new roles as we reshape our teams... within each country, that is United States and India. Employees who were affected by last week's changes are eligible to apply for any of these roles,” said the executive exclusively to Moneycontrol.
It is learnt that several of those affected by the layoffs are employed in Walmart’s Bengaluru and Chennai Global Capability Centres (GCCs) in India. Walmart employs about 21 lakh people, most of whom work in stores, and employees in corporate offices make up a small percentage.
Walmart on May 21 laid off around 1,500 employees globally part of a broader restructuring aimed at streamlining operations, reducing costs, and speeding up internal decision-making.
In a memo to employees, two top Walmart executives announced that the restructuring is designed to enable the company to respond more quickly to a rapidly changing retail environment. "Shaping our organisation enables us to drive faster how we deliver and keep pace with the evolving world around us," the memo read.
Meanwhile, the executive said the layoffs reflect a broader trend in the tech and retail industry where emerging technologies are changing business demands and rendering some skills obsolete as companies adapt.
Walmart, the largest company in the world by revenue, is not alone.
The tech industry is facing yet another wave of pink slips in 2025, with major players like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and CrowdStrike letting go of thousands as part of sweeping restructuring efforts.
According to Layoffs.fyi, over 61,000 tech workers have already lost their jobs this year across more than 130 companies. Microsoft alone accounted for 6,000 of those jobs, the company’s largest round of layoffs since 2023.
And Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being blamed for the job losses.
Nevertheless, most technologists and experts believe that despite AI being the biggest shift of this century, it will prove to be a net job creator in the long run. Tech industry heavyweights such as Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy, Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran, GitHub chief executive Thomas Dohmke, and many others have weighed in on the idea.
India’s largest conglomerate's chief Chandrasekaran, in a recent event, said, “On the contrary, to all the apprehension, Gen AI adoption wholeheartedly serves as and proves to be a net job creator for India. Let’s face the reality, certain routine jobs will go.”
Earlier this month, US-based financial services firm Wells Fargo announced plans to shut down its Chennai GCC, asking employees to relocate to Bengaluru or Hyderabad by the fourth quarter of FY27.
Walmart: Growing AI Adoption
With about 240 million footfalls at over 10,500 Walmart stores, the company has in the recent past implemented AI to determine product demand, inventory movement, and supply chain.
Last month, Walmart announced that it has shortened the traditional production timeline for “Trend-to-Product” by as much as 18 weeks, getting chic clothes to customers while they’re still on-trend.
This implies that the company needs to evolve across the organisation and simplify the structure to facilitate speed and innovation.
“After last week's changes, what I can say is that Walmart has fewer layers in the company, which means less complexity and ultimately faster decision making,” the source said.
Additionally, the company has also deployed the Gen AI tool “Wally” to automate a variety of processes such as data entry and analysis, diagnoses of product performance, customer support for answering operational questions, and automating complex formulas and predictions.
New Structure
Because of the unprecedented pace of technology in today’s day and age, Walmart wants to make sure that teams collaborate with speed and effectively serve customers.
The over-60-year-old retailer wants to stay relevant by continuing to take a look at customers' and members' wants, what they value, and also anticipate future needs.
“What that means is that we are constantly in a state of looking at how we modernise the business. And in some instances like this, it meant we needed to reshape some things… to make sure that we stay ahead of delivering on those expected experiences and staying ahead of what the future of retail looks like,” the source further said.
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