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Assignment is all about strategic planning & analysis of HRM in corporate culture of Walmart , one of major retailers

Home, - Annual Operating Plan for the Human Resource Department of Walmart

Organization’s Mission & Vision

The mission statement of Walmart Inc.’s states that “there is need to save the money of customer to make their life better.” The slogan for the company “Save money; Live better” is also in direct alignment to the company’s mission. The company’s mission is the reflection of the ideology of company’s founder Sam Walton. His business strategy aims at attracting target customer through cost as the selling point. Similarly, Walmart vision states “becoming the destination for the customers for saving money, irrespective of their shopping interest.”

While creating a strategic plan, the foremost priority is given in developing an organisational objective as it helps in designing efficient plans towards guiding the company’s growth. The initial objective includes the identification of the company goals and developing a plan to achieve it with the available resources. Further, the objective includes the methods through which the company’s success or failure can be measured. Then the objective also includes the process of identification of people who will be affected by the accomplishment of the organisational goals. Finally, it describes to estimate the time frame within which the goal can be achieved (Greene, 2018).  

The strategies which can be incorporated during the strategic planning include the following: There should be collaboration within the department included in the planning stage for proper evaluation of the strategic plan and is directing it towards better result. There is need for the management team to periodically examine the plan. Once the plan work out well and is on right path, then there should be periodical expansion and improvement on the plan. After accomplishing the goal, there is need to prepare new and big goals.

Corporate HR Vision

All over the world the total number employees in Walmart includes approximately 2 million. The founder of Walmart holds a higher value on his workforce which makes him to denote his HR department as ‘The People Division’. The employees of the company are the common bond which holds all the company’s strategies together for achieving the goal. The HR department holds seven basic strategies for achieving goal, viz; operations, price, culture, talent, service, expenses, and key products (Martinson, & De Leon, 2018). They believe in aligning these business strategies with the HR practices of the company. According to reports. Thus, the HR department executes it by following these steps:  It aims at providing value for money products at reasonable price, so as to save the customer’s hard earned money. For this purpose, the HR department performs every possible things to cut down the price. This strategy also helped in pressurising the competitors.   It focuses to connect people to product by making the employees think like the retail merchants. It makes all its decisions on the behalf of its customers.  The HR of the company maintains a diverse workforce who are entrepreneurial minded and works for the success of the company. They always look for the opportunities for solving business risks related problems (Magotra, Sharma, & Sharma, 2015). The HR functional service is oriented towards the customer service, as the biggest risk for the company is losing customers. Eventually, every employees also know that their job is also highly dependent on the customers.    Walmart aims at recruiting the best candidate, providing the best training and provide the best workplace environment. The company success can be easily achieved when the right candidate is placed at the right position. From, the above strategies of the HR department of Walmart it is relevant that the HR corporate vision is “Our vision is to provide best customer service by controlling expenses and achieving the desired business goal.”

Corporate HR Environmental Analysis (HR SWOT)

Strengths:

The staffs of Walmart are highly competitive in nature which strength for the company and weakness for its competitors. They try to reduce the price of product in all possible way of operations.  It believes in effective and efficient supervision as well as direction of all processes (Qian, 2018). It is a customer centric as well as employee centric organisations, having approximately 245 million customers and 2 million of employees. After the recruitment process, it provides leadership training to its employees for all possible advancement. They have a strong competence in the field of information technology for supporting its efficient procurement.

The HRM department focuses on recruiting best talent and invest both time as well as resources towards training of the workforce.

Weaknesses:

The training given to the workforce is costly leading to the loss of the company. Most of the employees of Walmart have been recruited as the part-time employees. Since it sales diverse range of products so it has not flexibility or expertise for a particular product. Despite of its global presence, it has limited access or control over all the stores. 

Opportunities:

Presently, more advanced technology is available for boosting the activities related to human resource. There is an increased percentage of the hiring minorities and women in most of the organisations. It has an opportunity of merging with other global retailers, especially in the market of Europe or China or India. New stores are shifting its positions from large supermarket to the local malls (Lu, & Zhang, 2016).

Threats:

The company is known for paying low wages to its employees. Presence of employee unions is major threat for the company. Since Walmart is the number one retailer store, so it is the first target of other local and global stores.  

Annual Corporate HR Objectives and Strategies

Annual Corporate HR Objectives:

The chief people officer of Walmart Jackqui Canney states that their ultimate objective is to achieve seamless, frictionless shopping experience (whether offline or online) for their customers. They focus to rise higher on the basis of its rising expectations of customers. Its objective is to improve the digital performance in the digital shopping activity as well as maintaining its dominance presence in the brick and mortar industry. The top rivalry company of Walmart is Amazon is a leading e-retailer company. On the other hand, Walmart also aims to lead in ecommerce industry, as the world requires both clicks and bricks (Santos, &Laczniak, 2015).     

Annual Corporate HR Strategies:

The annual corporate HR strategies of Walmart include the following action plans:

Low cost leadership- It is the foremost strategy of Walmart to attract customers. However, it also led to create employment at a very low price which led to many challenges.  Training- proper training is given to employees for adjusting their behaviours according to the requirements of company. Compensation management policy- it is evident that Walmart has spent about $634.4 million towards awards and benefits for motivating employees.  High level performance- it has pre-set standards as well as design for all jobs positions.  Labour relations- towards perspective of labour relations, union workers are paid less and the customers are given huge discounts (Schiemann, & Ulrich, 2017).  Gap identification- Gap is identified in best practices Walmart like product development team, requirements and specification management, and project and management.

Implementation of AHROP

The annual HR objective plan of Walmart includes strategies which has also some challenges on its ways. Following are the strategies along with its challenges and respective solutions: Staffing- The most important job of the human resource department is to interview and hire candidates. However, the major challenge in this process is to hire the most qualified and suitable candidate for the specified position. Second, due to low wages there is continuous increasing employee turnover rate. However, qualified candidates can be achieved by providing them requisite training. Moreover, HR team should try to make the workplace a better by providing perks, leaves and conducting recreational activities (Jalloh, Habib, &Turay, 2016). Employee relations- it is the responsibility of HR department to maintain a hostile free work place. The annual objectives include revising company policies, increasing workplace safety, and providing a program for dispute resolution. It is the responsibility of the HR team to maintain a good relationship with the unions so as to avoid any kind of dispute.  Benefits- Annual benefit plan is required for attracting and retaining talents and it helps in ensuring that the company is still competitive and holds fair costs. However, the low cost strategy is an obstruction for providing the benefits to the employees. Walmart can look for other options to cut down the cost (example: in design and operation cost).

Measurement and Assessment of AHROP

The various tools for measurement and assessment of annual HR objective plan of Walmart includes: Salary competitiveness ratio (SCR): this measurement tool helps in evaluating the competitiveness with respect to compensation. It is obtained by dividing the average of compensation options by the average compensation wages provided in competitor companies (Youn, Kim, S. Lee, 2017).  Health care expense per existing worker: it is an assessment tool used for evaluating the health care plan. It is obtained through dividing the total health care cost by the total number of employees. Internal promotion rate: Assessment of promotion rate is used to evaluate the success of both retention and growth of the top employees. It is calculated by dividing the total number promoted employees by the number of total employees. 

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