Welcome to Hot Off the Press, a new series that will feature stories of collaboration and innovation from leaders and changemakers across the Retail Opportunity Network. In each installment, we’ll explore the ideas, challenges, and opportunities shaping the future of work in retail and beyond. We’re thrilled to launch this series with reflections from Patti Constantakis, Director, Opportunity at Walmart.org on a decade of progress and looking ahead to what’s next as we move from silos to systems.
2025 marks the 10th year of the Retail Opportunity Network. Since then, the world has experienced a pandemic that fundamentally changed the retail landscape, AI use has exploded, and we’ve seen the rise of skills-first workforce practices, among many other significant shifts. How has Walmart’s workforce strategy shifted to meet the changing landscape?
Over the past decade, Walmart’s workforce strategy has evolved in step with a rapidly changing world. From the pandemic to the rise of AI and the momentum around skills-first practices, we believe that system change brings sustainable change. Today, our focus is on building a future-ready workforce system that recognizes the skills a person has—whether learned on the job, in college, in the military, or elsewhere—and is agile enough to help workers build new skills quickly, wherever they are.
Our current pillars of work focus on unlocking what’s still missing in four key areas:
- Supporting workers in upskilling and navigating career pathways
- Establishing trusted validation of skills
- Scaling the adoption of skills-first practices
- Building infrastructure that enables data mobility across the workforce system.
And we’re committed to bringing it all together in a way that’s authentic and community-centered—because real change happens locally.
AI is rapidly changing work: what examples are you seeing of AI expanding rather than limiting opportunities for retail and entry-level workers?
AI has the potential to be a powerful enabler—not a limiter—for retail and entry-level workers. And we’re already seeing this in practice. AI is already accelerating the adoption of skills-based practices by streamlining processes and automating implementation at scale. It can also help power systems that match a worker’s skills, interests, and experience to in-demand jobs, making it easier for individuals to discover meaningful career pathways, and for employers to uncover talent they might otherwise miss. Ultimately, we believe AI will play a growing role in personalizing learning, simplifying hiring, and unlocking upward mobility—especially for those historically left at the margins of the labor market.
What innovations and activities are exciting you right now? Where do you see bright spots?
There’s so much great work happening across the Retail Opportunity Network and it’s hard to choose just a few. Here are some bright spots that are especially energizing right now:
- Skills-first Workforce Initiative (Burning Glass Institute) & JobSIDE (U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation): These efforts are tackling one of the biggest barriers to skills-first adoption—defining the skills needed for in-demand jobs. By creating common language and frameworks, they’re helping employers get started with skills-first practices, enabling educators to align training, and supporting workers in discovering new career paths that match their skills.
- Credential Value Index (Burning Glass Institute): This tool helps learners, educators, and employers understand which non-degree credentials actually lead to good jobs. It’s part of a broader push to improve the quality and transparency of credentials, giving workers and employers better signals to navigate the marketplace.
- Opportunity Youth Work: We’re seeing momentum in building full community models to support pathways to good jobs for Opportunity Youth. The Unlock Potential program—with partners like Big Thought, Responsible Business Initiative for Justice (RBIJ), and Persevere—is laying the groundwork for scalable, equity-driven hiring strategies that connect young adults to meaningful careers.
- Small and Mid-Sized Businesses (SMBs): With nearly half of the U.S. workforce employed by SMBs, we’re just beginning to dig into how to support these employers in adopting skills-based practices. Early research from the SHRM Foundation, Northeastern University, and the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program’s UpSkill America is helping us understand their unique challenges and opportunities—from tech constraints to ROI clarity—and we’re excited to build on that.
Where do you see the greatest opportunity for RON community members to meet the moment and be responsive to the rapidly changing landscape?
The pace of change in our world which is driven by AI, shifting labor market dynamics, and evolving employer needs demands a workforce system that’s agile, adaptable, and deeply responsive. This is the moment for RON community members to double down on what we’ve been building: a skills-first approach that recognizes talent wherever it’s learned and helps workers build new skills quickly, in the places they live and work.
The greatest opportunity lies in getting concrete and practical. We need to test real use cases with real workers, real jobs, and real-world conditions. That means piloting solutions that use data and technology to personalize career navigation, rapidly upskill workers, and help employers forecast and meet future talent needs. And just as importantly, we must move beyond pilots—expanding and sustaining what works, so that innovation doesn’t stay siloed, but becomes embedded in how the system operates.
The RON 2025 Convening’s theme was “From Silos to Systems: Reimagining Opportunity.” When the RON community meets again in a year, what do you hope to see has changed as a result of the conversations and collaboration that the 2025 convening sparks?
This year’s convening sparked a deeper, shared understanding across the RON community of how a skills-first approach comes to life—not just within individual organizations, but across the entire workforce ecosystem. We designed the event so that members would walk away with clearer insights into how other stakeholders think about and implement skills-first practices, and to discover tools and resources they didn’t know existed—and know where to find them.
Most importantly, we hope that the energy we saw at the convening leads to new collaborations and practical action. This is a moment to move from ideas to implementation, from pilots to systems. If we come back together in a year having tested real solutions with real workers in real jobs, and begun to scale what works, we’ll know we’re on the right path.
