Walmart Hrm Strategies

According to Raj Patel (2010), Wal-Mart employs “2.1 million greeters, stock clerks, and logistics officers working at its 8,416 stores ... [and] ranks among the largest employers worldwide--only China's army has more people on its payroll.” (para. 1). That is 2.1 million people who chose to work for the company, who were employed despite whatever setbacks there were holding them back from a “real” job. While Wal-Mart is definitely not the dream job, it is better than no job, and in fact does not pay that much below the retail average of $11.86/hour (EAE Alberta, 2011, p. 4). In this economy, it is unrealistic to believe that any retail job will lead a new fancy car every year, or pay much further than the necessities. The high cost of living with a low minimum wage goes beyond Wal-Mart’s business structure. However, it is a job that is helpful in employing students who need to pay for their education, and in assisting in immigrants making money when they first move to North America. It employs those hard to employ people and gives them the experience needed to move on to a better job with higher pay. Also missed in Parmar’s article is the fact that when employing two million people, there is a much higher chance of the company having an issue with employees. Due to its immense amount of employees, it is 5,500% more likely that a bad event will happen at Wal-Mart as opposed to smaller companies such

As stated on the corporate website (2017), “Walmart is the largest retailer in the world, where 2.3 million associates meet the needs of more than 260 million customers every week.” These numbers are huge, and with so many locations around the globe, they have had allegations been made by employees regarding their dissatisfaction about poor work conditions, gender discrimination, low wages, poor benefits, and inadequate health care. Walmart has been criticized for its policies against labor unions and this issue has prompted public outrage, (Johansson, 2005) which is of great concern for the market. The company has also faced criticism for being anti-union, but it has claimed that it is rather pro-associate, whereby employees

Because Wal Mart already have a lot of these expectations set in place, it is very important that the employees are educated and informed of the company mission and the culture of the company. For any company including Wal Mart it is very important that the employees are treated with respect and they are treated equal. The employees should also have a clear understanding that their success within the company would be rewarded. Wal Mart has set training programs for their employees.

Wal-Mart excels in customer service; and the wages provided to their employees is beyond just minimum wage. “Wal-Mart’s success is the direct result of the dedication of its associates, and they reward their hard work with benefits that work for them. Their benefits include more than medical coverage and a competitive pay package: They offer associates retirement savings plans, pharmacy benefits, the opportunity to share in bonuses and valuable discounts at their stores (walmartstores.com, n.d).”

In this assignment I have looked at strategic human resource management perspective in Marks and Spencer. Before move on the strategic human resource management, let us have a brief introduction about Marks and Spencer. According to the corporate website Marks and Spencer, started its business as a single market stall and grown to become one of the UK’s leading retailers of clothing, food, home products and financial services. Marks and Spencer employs 78,000 in the UK and abroad, have more than 700 stores and serve over 21 million customers every week. Marks and Spencer strongly committed to provide high quality products as premium prices. The company has an established brand name and exceptional financial turnover of £8 billion in 2012 (About Us, 2014).

For having "2.3 million associates around the world – 1.5 million in the U.S. alone," (corporate.walmart.com), Walmart cannot simply raise employee wages even if they wanted to. That is why it took Walmart quite some time to finally lift "the base wage to $9/hour in 2015 to $10/hour in February" (Bowman) just last year. Other than wages, let 's talk about the health care programs.

The success of companies in today's market place is a process that involves the way business practitioners manage its workers and the financial resources and structures. The management of employees, structures, and financial resources includes the development and establishment of effective compensation strategy. Actually, the lack of a sound compensation system has negative impacts on the company's ability to recruit and retain competent and best-qualified employees. Consequently, compensating workers represents an important practice of a company's human resource management (Martocchio, 2013). Wal-Mart is not only a cultural but also a business phenomenon that operates in a competitive environment that is very unique. The company has grown steadily since its inception to an extent that it has become the number one ranked firm on Fortune 500 for four consecutive years. The success of the company is attributed to sound business practices and strategies throughout the years. Currently, the firm has over 1.3 million employees in America, making it the largest employer in the United States. In addition to being the biggest corporation worldwide, Wal-Mart's ability to attract and retain qualified employees is based on its compensation strategy.

The company needs collaboration. Therefore, the company will have to associate with right people or partners to enhance their productivity and growth in business. Wal-Mart started on a small scale and has made a great impact socially and economically not only in the United States but other nations as well; increasing products and services for the numerous consumers especially at lower prices. According to Lavallee & Boyer, Wal-Mart is known to be an initiator and receiver of globalization and has really transformed retail industry in the United States.

Organizations that are committed to retaining good workers must also provide adequate compensation that allows employees to feel the organization cares about their needs. In order for Wal-Mart to remain competitive they must offer a compensation package that employees feel is fair and comparable to other organizations. If employees feel that the organization does not care or place any value on their individual needs employees may not remain with the organization and/or adapt the desired behaviors the organization requires, to provide superior customer service.

However, in 2008, there was a change from $8.63 to 10.83 per hour. Managers at Walmart do not respect employee's rights, and they sometimes treat employees in a way that is against the law in the United States. Managers even sometimes force employees to work off the clock and skip lunch, and it is again against the law. The CEO needs to pay attention of such a situation. Because of the labor-related issues, there were several lawsuits against the company in 2008 in the following States: Colorado, Minnesota, Oregon, etc. There was also a gender discrimination situation where Women claimed in 2007 they were not treated fairly by the company. Even though people consider Walmart the company that employs more than 1.4 employees, it does not pay good salary to its employees. It is against the law to treat people in such a way. In 2002, Walmart used a type of competition that was not normal

Sam Watson the founder of Walmart once said “our people make the difference”. Walmart understands the importance of its human resource department. Its employees deal directly with its customers and this has an influence on the success of Walmart. The objectives and corporate goals of Walmart are cost reduction, saving money for on goods for its customers to live better and the acknowledgement that their success to a great extent depends on their employees. The human resource functions that Walmart has put in place to be in line with its business objectives are its retention programs/strategies, internal promotion and career development and compensation.

ANON (2005) Working at Wal-Mart: Recruitment and human resource strategies (Online), available, http://www.gdsinternational.com/infocentre/artsum.asp?mag=173&iss=131&art=24832⟨=en, 20th December

With every company there come strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats and Wal-mart is no exception. Wal-mart sits at the number one spot when it comes to retail businesses but they have had many issues; in particular labor law violations because they did not allow their employees to take required lunch and meal breaks.

Successful corporations in today’s business world must be able to employ different levels of planning in order to achieve goals put in place by senior management. Wal-Mart has many different levels of management planning in place to follow through on its goals and objectives. There are many factors that influence Wal-Mart’s strategic, tactical, operational and contingency planning. Although Wal-Mart has been a very successful corporation throughout its existence, it has had to absorb the impact of legal issues, ethics, and corporate responsibility in its management planning.

Human Resources bear another competitive advantage of Wal-Mart. The retailer is eager to employ only people that agree totally with the philosophy of Wal-Mart and put all their effort to achieve the most possible success for their company. Furthermore, it is common to recruit graduates directly after education. The advantage of the company is the ability to influence the working behavior of the employees. In order to motivate the employees, they were involved into actively suggesting improvements in day to day operations, resulting in cost savings of 85 million US-$ in 1993. Additionally, it is possible for the employees to participate in shareholding and to obtain dividends of Wal-Marts profits. Looking at the top of the company, it is not important, which position every single management member takes in the