Inside Walmart’s New 350-Acre HQ

Fortune

Walmart is making a big change in how it operates—and it starts in Bentonville, Arkansas. Fortune gets an inside look at the retail giant’s brand-new, 350-acre campus. Long known for its no-frills roots, Walmart is now investing big in its hometown to attract top-tier talent, modernize its culture, and compete with tech giants like Amazon. Here’s a closer look at how the United States’ largest employer is reinventing itself.

Transcript

00:00This 350 acre campus is the site of Walmart's new headquarters, a huge bet

00:06on in-person work. This home base is a big tool for talent attraction as well

00:10and it's all taking shape here in Bentonville, Arkansas. The ability to

00:15recruit talent is so much easier now that we have built our campus. People

00:21really have the desire to come together. With over 600 billion dollars in

00:25annual revenue and 1.6 million US employees, Walmart is both the nation's

00:30largest company and its largest private employer. But it's also faced a lot of

00:34questions over its labor practices, store wages and whether it can compete with

00:38Amazon. Now the company is turning inward, investing heavily in an amenity-packed

00:44headquarters meant to attract top-tier talent and reshape its corporate

00:47culture. This sprawling new campus includes 12 office buildings, workout

00:58facilities, two miles of bike trails, a childcare center and even a hotel. The

01:03facilities opened officially in January but the rollout will continue in phases

01:07throughout 2025. So this is our campus welcome center. It's got our first

01:13original Walmart sign and kind of size to the very early Walmart stores for the

01:19company. Walmart's roots run deep in Northwest Arkansas where Sam Walton opened

01:23the first store in 1962. Since then the region has been the heart and soul of the

01:28retail giant. When the company and the board said we're gonna invest in a new

01:31place to work it's really easy for us to decide we're staying in Bentonville, a place

01:35that built us. In the last 10 years quite a few large companies have

01:39inaugurated new headquarters. Was there anything out there you know common

01:44mistake that you said you know you can learn from others in advance. Was there

01:46anything that you said okay well let's let's avoid that? So other campuses that

01:50were doing larger urban settings or maybe sort of had the luxury of being walled off

01:56from their community we knew we didn't want to be that. We knew that the lines

02:01between work and life continue to blur and great company campuses can be very

02:06productive spaces and stay alive in the evenings and the weekends. So for us we

02:11knew that we didn't want to kind of single ourselves away in fact we went all the

02:15way in the other direction and we've really tried to make it feel like this

02:19campus is great for Walmart and great for Bentonville. This is a great example of a

02:23bike garden so these are at every entry covered bike parking. Our aspiration is

02:28to get 10% of our associates actively commuting through alternate ways. That focus

02:33on merging Walmart and Bentonville has helped define the look and feel of the

02:36campus but it's not just changing Walmart it's transforming Bentonville. Since

02:412020 the county population has increased by 13% and the average home price has

02:46gone up over 70% and it's not just home prices residents are seeing an increase in

02:51property taxes and the cost of water doubling and as the Waltons continue to

02:56announce new investments there are no signs of Northwest Arkansas seeing a

02:59slowdown in growth. So I want to connect this a little bit to Bentonville. Bentonville

03:04I was shocked when I took my taxi and saw population 54,000 whatever it is and it

03:11was pretty sleepy not long ago. It's not a metropolis yet you know but is it part of

03:16that idea that people can come to Bentonville and have a lot of the

03:20amenities that they would find in a Seattle or in a New York City. Yeah I would

03:25argue it's even better than Seattle or other places because the sentiment that

03:30we hear from the recruiting side is that this is a town where people feel like it's

03:37a it has that small town feel you know it does really feel like you're building

03:42you're coming into a community but it does have access to a lot of the larger city

03:47and amenities right if you look at you know our beautiful health care center the

03:52beautiful green space we have access to great food great restaurants culture

03:58museums it really does have it all if you will so while it might not be the big

04:04metropolis you know of a New York or other places it really has the best of

04:10both worlds. So from your point of view what is it about the facilities that

04:14fosters the culture and interaction because you know a physical space is a

04:17physical space and there has to be you can't just say okay all of you go work in

04:21these buildings and you'll have a culture and you'll collaborate more so what has

04:24to accompany the physical amenities? Speaking as the talent person I will say

04:29you have to have the right talent in the right roles that's like job number one

04:33but I will also say going back gosh during the pandemic when all of the spaces

04:38were being designed and they solicited input from the experts in learning right

04:43the experts in tech etc so it really was designed with the how shall I say end user in

04:50mind of which is the associate it's all part of a transformation Walmart hopes

04:54will help redefine its image from legacy retail giant to forward-thinking

04:58employer of choice this is a place we call the library you asked me if there was

05:07anything we changed during the pandemic and this is a great illustration of a

05:11lesson learned maybe an enhancement that we made you spent years with people in

05:17their homes in their offices in their living rooms on their patios and I've

05:22learned a lot about our associates just from zooming with them in this space made me

05:27realize people really embrace the residential nature of their homes they

05:31like to have comfortable places to occupy so tell us a bit about the former home

05:36office which had been the home office for what about 50 years more or less yes

05:42what were the shortcomings there that guided you think of the construction of

05:46all this and to your mind is more conducive to the culture I think the the

05:52challenge with the old home office it was it was wonderful it suited our culture I

05:57think the challenge with the older campus was it was a bit spread out so it was

06:03probably a little less convenient you know to interact and connect and

06:07collaborate then obviously this new campus is doing the old Walmart home

06:13office was housed in a former warehouse there was minimal light and reflected the

06:17frugal ethos of the company to get a better sense of the past I went to the

06:21Walmart Museum in the town square it's filled with artifacts like Sam Walton's

06:25truck and office and even has a Sam Walton hologram we're gonna go inside have a

06:30look at some of the historical high points of this company and what has

06:34created the culture that the new home office recently open seeks to preserve

06:38and enhance so here we are looking at a replica of Sam Walton's original office

06:46that was housed at the previous home office with the common thread you know

06:50one thing a Walmart always talks about is our values are timeless but change is

06:55constant and one of the things that I'm really proud about as a 23 year Walmart

07:00associate is the investment in new workspaces being able to bring all of

07:05our teams together historically in Bentonville we've been spread out across

07:0929 buildings all over town and the new home office brings all those different

07:15teams together to really unlock being more effective and efficient in person

07:21for decades Walmart's focus was outward pouring billions into logistics supply

07:31chain infrastructure and international expansion it was all part of a race to

07:35stay ahead of rivals like Amazon whose dominance in e-commerce has reshaped how

07:39Americans shop and now that many of the largest companies in the country have

07:42built state-of-the-art headquarters Walmart has felt the pressure to keep up I

07:46think coming out of the pandemic there's a real need and desire for people to

07:52connect with each other to create community come together to grow and

07:57learn and I think the campus the way that it's been designed has really

08:01facilitated that already so that's what I think the overarching purpose is you know

08:06there was a time for example some of the e-commerce teams were out west and you

08:11know it can be a little disparate is the idea here to create one unified Walmart you

08:17know not we're not talking about the store employees but the corporates is that the

08:21idea behind all this yeah I think yes and we're still gonna have hubs we have

08:27hubs on the west coast where a lot of our tech talent is east coast in New Jersey we

08:33have teams there as well but the goal is you know our culture is present

08:39anywhere where we are and so we'll continue to have that and go to where the

08:45talent is but know that those teams also come here and work together as well so

08:52this is sort of the heartbeat if you will of Walmart but know that we have

08:57other locations where we'll continue to you know build our to our teams as well you

09:03have a sense of what tech talent wants or what you know somebody who would be

09:08going to a luxury retailer wants so the the point of all this as well as to give

09:12those employees the amenities that in a way the market says people of their

09:17skills should should have access to yeah absolutely the candidates that we're

09:21bringing here they are inspired and I think the inspiration comes from not just

09:28the beauty of the campus the green spaces etc but it's the ease in which we can

09:34connect now on campus in fact our sentiment data that's shared with us our

09:41candidates that come in are three times more likely to be open to moving to

09:47Northwest Arkansas because they've come here they've visited they've experienced

09:52the area they've experienced our campus and they feel our culture

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