HR leaders today are racing to keep up with a pace of change that is unprecedented for the profession. AI is transforming all facets of the function, employees need—and HR has to forecast—the skills to innovate in the future, record rates of burnout are dragging down engagement and productivity. How can HR get ahead in such an environment? The HR executive at the largest employer in the United States is doing so with a simple mantra in mind: Take action—and do it today.

HR is an “architect” of the business, says Donna Morris, executive vice president and chief people officer at Walmart. This means HR people professionals need to “get out of the administrative [work] and stop talking about, ‘Do I have a seat at the table?’ ”

Own the role of a “strategist,” Morris says, and use that platform to design talent processes around the vision for future business outcomes. That approach underlies Morris’ work at Walmart, which earned her the title of 2025 HR Executive of the Year from HR Executive.

The award recognizes HR excellence and innovation among leaders who have significantly elevated the strategic role of their function. Morris will be among those honored for excellence in HR and HR technology during the inaugural HR Icons Awards next week in Las Vegas.

Company-changing leadership

Morris joined the retail giant in 2020, just one month before the start of the pandemic, after 17 years at Adobe. Today, she oversees all people operations for the company’s 2.1 million global employees, including 1.5 million in the U.S.—with a focus on the interplay between technology transformation, employee experience and long-term business outcomes.

“As Walmart continues to change and put technology to work to better serve our customers, members and associates in new and exciting ways,” wrote Doug McMillon, president and CEO of Walmart, in Morris’ nomination letter, “her leadership continues to change our company. Donna and her team are ensuring our associates remain our priority as we prepare them for the future and provide opportunities to thrive in a tech-powered world.”

AI at Walmart: education and experimentation

As AI rapidly redefines work, Morris has led Walmart’s efforts to design its role in the employee experience.

In 2023, Morris took about 60 team members to the San Francisco Bay Area to do a “deep dive on all things AI.” About two months later, the team rolled out Me@Campus. The all-in-one mobile and desktop solution, for about 50,000 office associates, supports everything from hiring to onboarding, performance management, facilities booking and more.

The platform was later launched as MyWalmart for field-based associates, as the company calls its employees, and Me@Sams for Sam’s Club associates.

Within the platforms, workers have access to My Assistant. Powered by generative AI—and versed in more than 50,000 company policies and procedures—My Assistant was designed to be a “playground” for AI experimentation among employees, who are encouraged to tap the tech for myriad ways to make their jobs more efficient.

Related: Walmart streamlines AI agents for employees

As the tool got off the ground, associates across functions and segments participated in “roadshows and bootcamps,” Morris says, which educated them about everything from the potential role of AI at work to the best way to write a prompt. These “regular opportunities” for employees to listen, learn and try the technology have been critical to reducing the fear that often comes with tech integration at work.

Employees across the country have since offered more than 4 million prompts through My Assistant.

“They are now finding ways to disrupt their jobs, or disrupt aspects of their jobs, but they’re not feeling threatened,” Morris says. “Our role in HR is to help equip individuals with skills and provide an environment where they’re not afraid.”

Preparing for AI with transparency and foresight

Employees have to know that change is coming—through AI or other means—and that they shouldn’t fear, but rather, should embrace it, Morris says. Role modeling by HR can be critical to this end. Morris has been working to educate her own team about AI integration so that they can serve as company-wide ambassadors.

For instance, this summer, the total rewards team hosted an expo showcasing how more than 40 associates had leveraged AI in different ways to reimagine their workflows.

“In doing that, it created a comfort level for people to try and experiment and learn,” she says.

Morris says she personally is using AI, specifically ChatGPT, almost daily.

“It’s only making me more effective,” she says.

‘Acknowledge’ the worry

Yet, fear about AI integration is palpable in workforces across industries, Morris notes. HR’s first line of defense against that sentiment, she says, is transparency.

“We have to acknowledge [the fear],” she says. “The more transparent you are, the better.”

Noting the persistent ambiguity in the landscape, however, Morris says frequent communication from HR is essential. Be supportive of change—“to the point of being empathetic,” she advises—and equip workforces with the skills they will need to thrive in a world that is going to look different.

Earlier this month, Walmart announced that it is one of the first participants in the Certificates program from OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. In 2026, Walmart associates will have access to free OpenAI certification.

‘Fixing the toil’ in HR with AI

HR’s critical hand in reimagining workflows, roles and its own processes in light of AI’s influence is placing new expectations on the function.

More than ever, there’s truth in the idea that “the most successful people leaders are business leaders,” Morris says.

HR professionals who are “out and in front of AI” are spending time understanding the real business challenges and envisioning how AI could fill in gaps. Walmart, for instance, is leveraging technology to offload administrative work from associates trained in merchandising so they can focus on finding the items that will resonate with customers—boosting both customer and employee experience.

“If we can use technology to take out some of the work that is more duplicative, more operational in nature, then our employees are actually able to spend more of their time on the more human work,” Morris says.

Related: Meet the HR Leader of Distinction: Future-proofing the function at Blackstone

Key to that aim for HR professionals is getting “proximate to the business to figure out what problems they are trying to solve, and where might they be able to apply digital or AI to be more effective and more productive.”

Where is Walmart’s AI journey headed?

That’s the directive for Morris’ team at Walmart, as they focus on “fixing the toil” and enabling HR professionals to concentrate on more people-centric duties.

The work is already proving effective: Walmart built an AI tool that walks job candidates through an interview, prep work that previously took considerable time for recruiters. The team is looking at how AI can be applied for interview scheduling to continue to relieve the administrative burden on recruiters. Morris’ team is also starting to use large language models to predict salary trends in the market, enabling its professionals to spend more time reimagining rewards plans.

“If I were to forecast a year from now,” Morris says, “I would say there’s probably not a single function across the people team here at Walmart that won’t be shaped somehow because of AI.”

Skills for the future

Given the impact that tech is having on Walmart’s operations, including in HR, leaders have been deliberate in ensuring the focus is right: The company is “people-led, tech-powered.”

“We wanted to make sure that we were underscoring the order of how we were going to drive our strategy going forward,” Morris says. “It was going to be people—and then, it was going to be technology.”

That means the company has invested heavily in equipping its people for exactly what it means to be tech-powered, with a focus on skills-building—all part of a $1 billion investment to provide U.S. associates career-focused training by 2026.

“Donna’s leadership at Walmart in upskilling teaches all of us that skills matter more than pedigrees and you need an investment model for your associates,” says Peter Fasolo, former CHRO of Johnson & Johnson, the 2022 HR Executive of the Year and a judge for this year’s competition.

In 2022, its Walmart Academy, which focuses on training, went global. Last year, Walmart significantly expanded the formal learning opportunities available to associates, including more than doubling the short-form certificates and courses offered through Live Better U.

The ROI of skills-building

The education benefit, offered in partnership with Guild, is available to all full- and part-time hourly and salaried associates—from their first day. Currently, more than 136,000 of them have taken advantage of the benefit, Morris says.

The MyWalmart platform, Morris says, is among the avenues through which the company pushes reminders about learning opportunities.

“We are actively working to, frankly, market within our own organization the ability for someone to be educated—on the job or through a pathway like Walmart Academy,” she says.

Associates who have participated in skills-building programs report higher engagement and retention levels, Morris says, as well as more job mobility. This year, about 78% of jobs have been filled internally, she says.

One prime example is the path to being a driver. By this fall, the company will have educated 1,000 associates to go from working in jobs such as at a distribution center to the role of driver, with a starting salary of $90,000.

“We’ve taken the supply of our own internal talent and have focused on, where do we see the future going in terms of skills and capabilities? How do we equip our own associates with those skills and capabilities?” Morris says.

A collaborative approach from the HR Executive of the Year

These are questions Morris is also encouraging other business leaders to consider. She was integral in bringing to life the inaugural Opportunity Summit in Washington, D.C., last year—uniting stakeholders that included business and nonprofit leaders, government officials and workforce experts to explore the potential of skills-based strategies. A key goal and outcome of the event was the development of a skills taxonomy for core frontline roles, encompassing 11 million U.S. jobs, and the launch of the Skills-First Workforce Initiative.

Fasolo worked with Morris and her team during the D.C. summit while he was at J&J.

“Donna and Walmart continue to have the credibility to pull together employers, government officials, NGOs and others to share what we are doing in upskilling,” he says. “The idea is to create a framework to understand a taxonomy for a common language across multiple jobs. This is a great example of Donna’s thought leadership and being a role model for our profession.”

The next summit will be held in Bentonville, Ark., where Walmart is headquartered, in 2026. Then, Morris says, the organization will “pass the baton” to another organizer as stakeholders work to extend the skills framework to cover 40% of U.S. jobs.

“Our largest workforce is a frontline workforce, and we want to celebrate the skills they acquire on the job and make sure that they’re able to capture those skills and communicate about them as they progress their careers,” she says.

Managers of the future

Associates aren’t the only ones whose skills Walmart is investing in.

Morris was a key force behind the 2022 launch of Manager Academy, a week-long, in-person training for managers in Bentonville. By the end of 2025, all managers of U.S. stores, clubs and supply chain operations will have completed the program.

The training takes a unique human-centric approach to management—focusing on company values and how managers can lead with empathy, navigate change and build relationships with both employees and customers.

These are skills, Morris says, that will be increasingly essential in a tech-powered organization.

“We could all walk around with our eyes in our devices, without stepping back and saying as managers and leaders, ‘It’s actually about the human connection,’ ” she says.

When managers are well-equipped with both the technical know-how and an understanding of how to lead with Walmart’s values at the forefront, their leadership becomes more empathetic and effective, Morris says.

For example, she points to a tool Walmart created that can, among other capabilities, push notifications out to managers of attendance red flags. From there, managers can lean into the connection with their employee to get ahead of a potential issue.

In one week this summer, managers made 50,000 check-ins with associates—conversations driven in part by technology.

“That’s digital equipping,” Morris says. “That’s awareness of how to use digital tools, but more importantly, it’s allowing our managers to spend more time with people, which is paramount to our business.”

Wellbeing driven by listening

That investment in Walmart’s people came to life particularly during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, the response to which Morris helmed. Among the immediate actions was the rollout of a COVID policy that guaranteed employees paid leave to care for themselves or loved ones during a diagnosis.

“We leaned in to really ensure that their safety and their wellbeing were secured,” she says. The company’s focus on wellbeing—with “real, deliberate” change to support employees’ mental, physical and financial health, such as providing access to counseling for all employees, regardless of whether they participate in the health plan—helped “establish strength and trust and, frankly, even affection between employees and the business,” Morris says.

Staying in tune with the needs of employees is key to how Walmart evolves its benefits offerings to support wellbeing. The Associate Engagement Survey is a critical listening tool, and Morris’ team also “scrapes social data”—from Glassdoor to Reddit—and considers onboarding and exit interview commentary.

At its annual Associates Week—where more than 10,000 associates from around the globe come together for a celebration that has a “career fair” bent to it—employees can offer feedback by participating in listening booths, which are also available at regular associate and leadership meetings.

Walmart’s listening strategy revealed that associates were eager to have more ownership in their employment experience—leading the company to roll out a 3-for-1 stock split to make stock purchases more affordable for employees. Currently, 500,000 associates buy stock regularly, Morris says.

The business case for leading-edge benefits

Employee feedback was also a driver behind the 2022 launch of family-building benefits with partner Kindbody. Associates can access support with fertility treatments, adoption and surrogacy. More than 2,200 employees and their family members have utilized the benefit, with about 275 babies born or on the way.

As HR leaders seek to build a business case for benefits and programs that support employee wellbeing, Morris advises that they lead with business acumen. Know the metrics and margins—and how they could shape the potential investment. Appreciate the business problems you’re trying to solve, and focus on how to actively manage costs—which, ultimately, means managing health outcomes.

Amassing “big data sets” can be a critical tool, she says. For instance, understand the top illnesses affecting certain parts of the workforce; sometimes, small actions—like offering flu clinics in the fall, knowing that absenteeism spikes during flu season—can have meaningful business impacts, Morris says.

“My caveat is: Do not chase what the competition does,” she says. “In HR, we can have envy: ‘This company’s doing that,’ and we need to step back and figure out what we need to do for our own business. It’s not always following what your competition does. It’s what’s right for you.”

A new vision for HR leadership

Viewing talent and business strategy as intrinsically linked, Morris says, is key to evaluating the success of HR efforts. Engagement and retention data are important metrics, but HR should also consider broader business outcomes.

“If business performance starts to soften, then I think you have to step back and say, ‘Are all of our strategies relevant to our people?’ ” she says. “Are they a positive contributor, or are they actually putting a burden on the operating principles of the organization?”

The answers to such questions will grow increasingly complex as the “rate of change accelerates,” Morris notes.

In addition, HR professionals must continue to focus on their own learning to stay on the leading edge in such a dynamic environment. For instance, she recently spent time with the HR leaders at a small AI start-up and OpenAI—in part to stimulate her own “intellectual curiosity” and to role model for her team the power of continuous learning, an essential tool for HR professionals who want to position themselves as strategic contributors.

“All of our jobs continue to morph and be reimagined—I don’t think our learning can ever stop,” she says.

Leading in a transformative moment

Morris is one, Fasolo says, who is always willing to share her own learnings with peers across the profession.

“Donna is on my ‘speed dial’ when I need to work my way through an issue or need a perspective on a workforce issue,” he says.

Constant learning, a willingness to do things differently and the ability to prioritize communication that brings the workforce along can help HR leaders “lead the change” in such an environment.

But, Morris says, getting ahead of change is going to require HR to rethink some long-held norms about the function and their own leadership.

“I will say sometimes in HR, we’re great at changing others. We’re not great at changing ourselves,” she says. “This is a period of time when HR has to be out in front, changing ourselves so that we can actually be role models for the business.”

Top takeaways on HR’s strategic future

The 2025 HR Executive of the Year, Donna Morris of Walmart, says HR needs to embrace change to make their functions truly transformative—from recognizing both the pain points and potential of AI to getting ahead of skills gaps and employee wellbeing challenges.

Here are her top insights for HR professionals riding this wave of change:

• AI transformation is as much about the “human” element as it is about the tech. Successful transformation will require HR to understand current and needed workforce skills—and to navigate employee fear through education. With the right strategy, AI can be a force multiplier for a human-centric HR function.
• Closing skills gaps can no longer be done organization by organization. Morris advocates for collaborative approaches that bring together employers, government entities, nonprofits and workforce leaders. Employees need to see a defined career path, within and outside their respective organizations, and be armed with the skills to navigate that journey in a quickly changing world.
• Wellbeing investment can be a powerful driver of culture. It’s critical to stay attuned to what support employees need to stay engaged, and to leverage business acumen—informed by data-driven insights—to gain leadership buy-in. Wellness strategies that align with employee needs can drive trust and morale in the long term, Morris says.

In addition to the HR Icons Awards Evening on Sept. 15, Morris will be recognized at the Human Resources Policy Institute’s Fall Summit at the Questrom School of Business at Boston University on Oct. 23-24. Learn more about HRPI and its members-only summit.