Discussion and 6-10 page paper

Assignment 1: Selecting a Company

Monieke Woods

Dr. Allan Beck

HRM 560

Date: April 14, 2017

WALMART

Walmart is one of the mega organizations worldwide in terms of size, business value and financial performance. For this success, Walmart has had to address its human resource planning and job design and how this contribute to the high performance of employees. It also considers how the structure of the firm, staff recruitment and assortment, retaining and training, performance management, reward and career progress contribute to the overall functionality of the organization

Walmart’s human resource planning is structured in terms of the programs and solutions developed and used. It having different stores has resulted in having variations in the interpretations of corporate human resource plan at different levels of the organization. Its use of forecasting software to analyze changes in the workforce as well as using information systems to address employee shortages and surpluses has proved to be very effective (Kavanagh, & Thite, 2009).

Walmart applies a centralized and hierarchical organizational design with some level of decentralization for instance each Walmart store has its own administration department. Each stores administration department has a manager to put on corporate managerial strategy based on the distinctive needs of the individual store. This ideal of organizational structure has enabled them to be face new or emerging issues in the business.

Walmart uses different sources in its recruitment drive. i.e. online staffing, direct staffing at the localities and recruitment through educational organizations. This is effective as it ensures diversity of applicants.

For a firm to minimize financial loss it must maximize employee retention. Walmart does this through a combination of strategies; recognition based on the staff performance, paybacks based on the staff status or position and incentives based on the staff’s grade or site. It also trains its employees to with a focus on the performance of its sells personnel (Werner, & DeSimone, 2011).

Performance planning at Walmart involves a performance appraisal system which provide feedback to its employees on their performance levels. It also uses a HR software product that analyses individual and team performance levels.

As a way to improve their performance Walmart can use an incentive plan that gives better incentives for low level employees rather than just the seniors, improve its job analysis and design by implementing more channels of communication through which employees can give feedback to managers and also improve its recruitment process through new strategies for global competitiveness now that it has stores all over.

References

Werner, J. M., & DeSimone, R. L. (2011). Human resource development. Cengage Learning.

Kavanagh, M. J., & Thite, M. (2009). Human resource information systems: Basics, applications, and future directions. Sage.