Walmart desperately tries to compete with Amazon with VR and employee delivery

To compete with Amazon, Walmart is turning to virtual reality and asking employees to deliver products on their way home.

It should come as no surprise to you that Walmart is struggling to match the constantly innovating and endlessly expanding efforts of Amazon. It’s also not surprising that many of initiatives Walmart announced ahead of its annual shareholders meeting seem like a direct appeal to be in tune with its technologically-savvy competitors.

One of the flashiest announcements was that Walmart would begin to train employees with virtual reality headsets, through a partnership with STRIVR. The virtual reality startup has also worked with PepsiCo and the NFL. After a soft launch, the company wants to install the VR training systems at all 200 of its training academies.

Training academies may also sound new to you. Walmart opened the first last year and each is connected to a Walmart Supercenter. They’re intended to teach employees in a classroom setting two weeks before starting a position. VR will be used to help students experience and deal with real world situations, including but limited to holiday crowds and clean-ups.

Even more aggressively, Walmart plans to compete with Amazon by turning those same store employees into delivery drivers. Three stores in New Jersey and Arkansas are testing out having their employees deliver packages on their way home after work for extra pay. As Quartz explains:

They’ll be given an app that allows them to input their routes, and an algorithm will plot the most efficient path. To take part, the employees will have to pass a background and vehicle check. In the pilot, most merchandise was delivered the day after the order was placed, beating Walmart’s pledge of second-day delivery.

At first glance, the system is kind of nuts and kind of desperate. But, upon closer consideration, it actually feels like the natural extension of the services like DoorDash that improve or extend delivery when the source’s delivery options are not enough. Only Walmart is pooling from their own people. And there are plenty of questionable ethical and labor practices inherent in the practices their mimicking.

Ultimately, it’s hard to feel confident this will be enough to beat Amazon, but at least Walmart’s trying.