Case Study · Workforce Transformation
Walmart, End to End
Three problems. One system. The world’s largest retail operation.
The labor engine behind Walmart’s stores — the engineered standards, the labor model, and the systems that turn them into schedules — had outgrown the organization built to run it. Five prior attempts, spanning internal teams and two of the world’s largest consulting firms, hadn’t fixed it. In July 2024, an operations SVP who had seen the work firsthand at Target brought in Chris Kalgren to lead it end to end.
2+ yrs
ongoing engagement, July 2024–present
100+
interviews behind a 360° capability assessment
+30%
team growth to right-size and skill up the Workforce Intelligence org
700
holistic WFM requirements — labor, scheduling, reporting, mobile, security
Halved
the total systems used to generate schedules
Three problems, solved as one system
Workstream I

Aligned the org

A 360° capability assessment — 100+ interviews — mapped skills, gaps, and missing disciplines across the WFM organization. Then the rebuild: re-org, new leaders, key hires. Labor Engineering, Labor Generation, Forecasting, and Scheduling realigned under one Workforce Intelligence team — grown ~30% and staffed to own the work.

Workstream II

Engineered the labor

The standards were overly complex, outdated, and unmaintained; the labor model was a patchwork of homegrown workflows running on tribal knowledge. The standards have been fully re-engineered, and the labor model redesigned as one systemized whole; design nearly complete.

Workstream III

Applied the technology

Benchmarked the full WFM technology stack against peer operations and won approval for a standardized, simplified multi-year transformation. Defined 700 requirements, selected the labor-standards and labor-generation partner and executive-led its implementation, then drove the strategic vision and RFP for scheduling.

Where it stands

Complete: engineered standardsNearly complete: labor model designIn flight: scheduling selection

Why this worked where five efforts stalled

Every seat in workforce management — industrial engineer, consultant, operations director, software executive — in one chair. Chris led all three workstreams end to end, backed by a small, hand-picked specialist team. It moved through Operations, HR, Finance, Product, and Technology because one accountable operator could see the whole system and drive it to one result. No leverage pyramid feeding itself work.

The person you meet is the person who owns the work.

“Chris is who I trust with the people and the work.”
— Executive Sponsor
Representative results across Kalgren engagements (not client-attributed): 30–50% lower annual turnover · 1–5% lower labor spend · 5–10% higher productivity and in-stock.
Tell me what’s not working.
First conversation is a 30-minute working call — you leave with one concrete idea, no pitch.

Let’s work →