Walmart | Virtual reality used to decide employee promotions

US retail corporation Walmart has welcomed the use of technology within its stores, using virtual reality (VR) to help promote its staff members.

Set to be rolled out across all of its 4,600 stores, the technology will source internal candidates for management positions, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The VR assessment aims to uncover how its workers might respond to challenging situations and how they prioritise different tasks, which wouldn’t necessarily be identified in a face-to-face interview. 

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So far, 10,000 employees have taken part in the test as part of an initiative to identify potential high performers and cut back the overall number of managers in store. Following the introduction of the assessment, a 12-year veteran of a store in Pennsylvania received a promotion to team a leader position and a ten per cent pay increase.