Org Merger: Walmart Stores and eCommerce

When Walmart.com launched in 2000, the site and the stores operated as separate entities. For two decades, the eCommerce and store merchandising organizations ran as parallel businesses with different systems, different processes, and different language for the same products, categories, and workflows. When Walmart announced it was ending that divide, approximately 6,000 eCommerce and store merchants would merge into a single unified buying organization. My job was to communicate that change to the 2,400 eCommerce merchandisers I directly served.

This integration happened in the middle of 2020, right in the midst of COVID. Employees were navigating remote work for the first time while absorbing a major organizational change. Everything had to be planned, written, and deliberate. That made the focus groups more impactful. With large-scale meetings now fully remote, written communications carried more weight than ever. Every touchpoint had to be clear and complete because there was no informal channel to fill the gaps.

I started running focus groups with eCommerce merchandisers before the public announcement dropped. Over approximately five months I ran 15 to 20 focus groups. The consistent feedback was that employees wanted plain, straightforward language, honest answers about what was changing, and practical guidance on the tools and processes they'd be navigating.

Working with a knowledge base specialist and a cross-functional team, I built the communications infrastructure for the eCommerce side of the integration. That included a knowledge base site built around tools and language standardization, executive messaging and editorial calendars, sustained employee communications across multiple channels, and monthly org-wide meetings with 300 attendees covering tool updates and process changes.

In hindsight, I would have built more into the communications strategy to address the realities of remote work. This integration was already complex before COVID hit. Adapting on the fly worked, but having a remote-first communications framework from the start would have made the work stronger.

The hardest communications work is the six months after the announcement, when people are waiting, watching, and deciding whether to trust what they're being told. Sustaining clarity and honesty across that window is where change communications lands.