Walmart Inc. Leveraging Human Capital

Subject: Employee Management
Pages: 5
Words: 1296
Reading time:
5 min
Study level: Bachelor

Introduction

Although the policies that Walmart has been deploying regarding its staff members should currently b viewed as one of the primary concerns and the subjects of further scrutiny. Due to the problems in the company’s policies regarding the management of its human capital, specific needs of staff members are vastly ignored, whereas the amount of workload with which employees have to deal increases exponentially. At the same time, the company provides a rather flexible schedule for its staff members, which implies that the current status of Walmart’s employees includes both full- and part-time working options (Altenburger, 2018). In the paper below, the approach that Walmart will have to adopt in its HRM framework will be discussed to improve its current position.

Job Performance & Evaluation

The performance indicators that can be used to assess the quality of Walmart staff’s job include meeting the set standards for sustainable performance, delivering the expected result by the set deadline, and cooperating within an interdisciplinary team. However, the current problems within Walmart’s organizational setting, especially in light of the future entrance into the Brazilian and Indian markets, suggest that the company should update its KPIs (Driver & Thompson, 2018). The proposed change suggests including the assessment of the employees’ ability to utilize proper cross-cultural communication skills and managing a vast amount of data, as well as learn new skills whenever the necessity to do so appears.

Reward & Encouragement Strategies

To assist staff members in their transfer to the new workplace environment, new patterns of communication with coworkers and customers, and new principles of knowledge management and acquisition, a system of rewards will have to be included. First, reconsidering the existing benefits package and including considerations for staff’s personal and culture-specific needs into it will have to be considered as a necessity. In addition, the improved benefits package will have to incorporate increased salaries and financial incentives for the employees that deliver increased performance or the results of outstanding quality. In addition, the approach toward communicating with employees will have to be redesigned (Lussier & Hendon, 2017). The dialogue between staff members and managers will need to become more open and reciprocal. Thus, the target demographic will receive a strong impetus for accepting the behavior, attitudes, and values that the company promotes.

It is also expected that employees will encounter a vast number of difficulties when transferring to a new field of interactions and functioning. Developing the skills necessary for building the dialogue between the company and its potential customers is likely to be not only time-consuming but also physically and emotionally exhaustive due to the pressure of responsibility and the necessity to accomplish the training along with the work-related goals. Therefore, consultations and professional support will be offered to staff members apart from the increased benefit package. With the help of consultations and counseling, employees will be able to overcome both psychological and emotional challenges, as well as introduce the balance of work and learning into their lives.

Levering on Employee Strengths

The key strategy to leverage the human resources currently involves promoting the active knowledge acquisition and development of skills through training and collaboration among them. The proposed technique is believed to have the most positive impact due to the emphasis on talent management and the active use of motivation strategies. The change of the corporate vision and the enhancement of the current leadership approach by reconsidering corporate values and viewing relationships between stakeholders as the main focus is another strategy for increasing employee assets. The selected approach will allow leveraging the available human capital and introducing the tools for maximizing its value, such as training courses and promotion of values associated with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), customer-oriented communication, and the enhancement of cross-cultural communication skills.

Furthermore, it is believed that the integration of the selected approaches will lead to interdisciplinary collaboration and an improved strategy for conflict management in the workplace. The latter is an especially significant stage in the process of leveraging employee assets since it will help to create an environment in which staff members will use misunderstandings emerging during communication as a means of learning new lessons and acquiring critical communication and negotiation skills. To identify the strengths in question, it will be necessary to use an interview; thus, core issues within the firm will be identified from the perspective of participants.

Culture Within the Organization

It is believed that the best general direction for Walmart to take currently concerns shifting the emphasis from the necessity to satisfy the needs of its shareholders to focus on the intrinsic issues of the organization. Specifically, employee- and diversity-oriented principles of managing the company will need to be introduced. Walmart will need to redistribute its current financial assets to invest in the development and growth of its human capital.

The corporate culture will also have to be centered around the ideas of innovativeness, continuous improvement, and unceasing learning., the specified concepts are essential for the effective use of the latest strategies and tools for keeping the company’s performance in the new markets at the necessary level. Specifically, it will be necessary to promote the notion of cultural competence as crucial knowledge to staff members, at the same time ensuring that they are capable of learning independently from their interactions with their Brazilian and Indian customers. It is believed that the approach based on unceasing learning and the enhancement of innovative thinking within the corporate setting will make Walmart the leading company in the Brazilian and Indian retail markets.

The specified change also implies that how the organization processes feedback from both its customers and employee will have to be changed. Similarly, the marketing approach utilized by the organization will be altered based on the information obtained from the cross-cultural dialogue between Walmart and its Indian and Brazilian stakeholders. Overall, a people-oriented approach will have to be incorporated into the company’s system of values as opposed to the process-focused one. The described change will require the application of the Transformational Leadership approach (De Cieri & Hutchings, 2017). Finally, the notion of CSR will need to be incorporated into the newly developed value system of the company. It will be necessary to promote corporate ethics geared toward the enhancement of corporate growth and the use of decision-making principles that allow maximizing Walmart’s performance quality.

Rewards & Incentive to Remain Competitive

To ensure that the organization can compete with its rivals in the selected economic settings, one will have to focus on the enhancement of its current approach toward rewarding employees for an excellent performance. The key incentives that the organization will need to consider including into its HRM approach should combine financial rewards and the public acknowledgment of employees’; success. The development of the emotional bond between the company and its staff is currently just as important for Walmart as the rise in the monetary benefits that its employees will receive. Due to the need to be appreciated for their efforts, employees will require extensive feedback and the general enhancement of the emotional rapport to be established between the staff and the company.

Conclusion

To succeed in the Brazilian and Indian markets, Walmart will need to integrate the principles of diversity and a people-oriented approach to cater to the needs of its future Indian and Brazilian stakeholders. The proposed framework will help to address the situation in which a substantial number of staff members find themselves at Walmart and that can be described as rather rigid and uncomfortable regarding the amount of workload and the overall workplace environment (Bauer, Erdogan, & Caughlin, 2018). Consequently, staff members experience major challenges in handling the tasks that are assigned to them. The lack of communication defines a drop in efficacy coupled with the decreasing quality of the employee-manager and employee-customer dialogue.

References

Altenburger, R. (2018). Innovation management and corporate social responsibility. New York, NY: Springer.

Bauer, T., Erdogan, B., & Caughlin, D. (2018). Human resource management: People, data, and analytics. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

De Cieri, H., & Hutchings, K. (2017). International human resource management: From cross-cultural management to managing a diverse workforce. New York, NY: Routledge.

Driver, C., & Thompson, G. (2018). Corporate governance in contention. Oxford, UK: OUP.

Lussier, R. N., & Hendon, J. R. (2017). Human resource management: Functions, applications, and skill development. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.