Walmart says workers reported a 27% confidence gain after OpenAI training

Walmart employees who completed OpenAI training reported a 27% gain in confidence using AI, a senior people executive said October 27. The disclosure accompanied findings from a workforce survey with more than 1.7 million responses, giving the retailer a large-scale view of how comfortable employees feel with technology—not a test of their skills.

Training comes before the confidence check

Over the past 13 months, Walmart has partnered with OpenAI and Google on learning and AI certification programs available to associates at no cost. Maren Waggoner, its chief people officer for associate experience and digital, described the approach as a combination of certificates, training and tools that employees can use in their daily work.

In June, the company asked its more than 2.1 million associates about their experience with AI for the first time. More than 1.7 million responses came back. The exercise covered a workforce whose jobs range from office work to frontline retail, with differing levels of familiarity and comfort with the technology.

Waggoner discussed the findings with CNBC’s Leslie Picker at the CNBC Workforce Executive Council Summit in New York City on October 27. Her central argument was that access and experience help employees feel more comfortable: Walmart is not simply offering instruction, but putting tools into the work people already do.

27%Reported confidence gain

Waggoner said associates who completed OpenAI training reported this gain in confidence using AI. It is a confidence measure, not a productivity result.

That distinction limits what the training result can establish. Employees’ own assessments show how capable they feel, rather than how accurately or effectively they perform a task. The reported gain also does not, by itself, prove that training caused the improvement. It should not be read as a 27% increase in skills or output.

The broader survey figures require another distinction. Seventy-seven percent of office-based associates said they felt confident using AI tools. Among U.S. frontline associates, 84% expressed confidence using digital tools. The latter is a broader category, not an AI-specific finding. The two percentages therefore cannot establish that frontline workers are more confident with AI than their office-based colleagues.

Walmart’s emphasis on comfort contrasts with a national mood of concern. CNBC cited an August 2026 Pew Research Center poll in which about 52% of U.S. adults were more concerned than excited about AI. That asks a different question of a different population: confidence operating workplace tools is not the same as optimism about AI’s wider effects.

The job stays; the tasks change

Waggoner also addressed what automation means for the work itself. Walmart is automating processes in fulfillment centers, she said, with the aim of reducing friction and physical tasks while focusing employees on human judgment. At its Dallas innovation lab, she said automation had created more quality-assurance-type roles rather than broader job losses.

Her store-level example involved a manager in Mexico whom she met earlier this year. He built an AI agent to examine reports and help drive fresh-produce sales, she said. In her telling, the technology supported the manager’s decisions without taking over responsibility for running the store. She credited it with strong sales, without giving a numerical result.

Waggoner said customers also like speaking with a person at checkout, leaving a role for associates alongside AI-assisted problem-solving. These examples explain Walmart’s preferred division of labor: technology handles parts of a task, while people retain judgment and customer contact. They are illustrations of that approach, not a companywide accounting of jobs gained or lost.