Assignment: HR Policy Proposal MGT530 Managing Human Capital

Report: HR Policies
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Contents
HR policies at Walmart.........................................................................................................................3
New HR policies...................................................................................................................................4
Improvement in employee retention..................................................................................................4
Effective Customer Service practices................................................................................................5
The use of technology to improve interoffice communication...........................................................6
Employee Performance Appraisals....................................................................................................7
Job listing..............................................................................................................................................8
Job listing for Secretary.....................................................................................................................9
Job listing for Marketer.....................................................................................................................9
Job listing for Operations Manager..................................................................................................10
Health, Safety and Wellbeing Guide....................................................................................................10
References...........................................................................................................................................14
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HR policies at Walmart
Walmart is retail and wholesale business headquartered in the US. It offers a variety of
consumer products at low prices through its supercentres, stores, e-commerce and
hypermarkets. It has business around many countries in the world and employs 2.30 million
staff members (CNN Business, 2022). With such a vast and widespread business, it can be
difficult to manage the large workforce required for effective functioning of the company. To
manage this large workforce, Walmart makes uses of human resource strategies as well as
human capital management (HCM) software (Wainewright, 2017). The HCM software helps
Walmart manage the entire lifecycle of employees, and also helps in supporting the global
compliance and payroll needs in various countries Walmart operates into (Wainewright,
2017). The HR policies at Walmart are related to employee recruitment, retention, training
and development, performance management, compensating and career development. In
addition to that, the HR policies at Walmart are designed with consideration of the corporate
culture and organisational structure (WBR Insights, 2022).
Walmart takes a stratified approach while formulating HR policies and strategies. The
planning of the HR policies and programs is done at the executive level of the company.
Meanwhile, each of the store and supercentre of Walmart has its own HR Manager, who has
the responsibility of facilitating company HR policies through their respective stores (WBR
Insights, 2022). Moreover, Walmart also allows its HR Managers to carry out an innovative
approach towards human resource management. The HR Managers have the liberty to
interpret and enhance the HR policies based on specific needs and characteristics of the
location or country that their store is operating in (Walmart, 2022).
The HR planning at Walmart ensures that the job analysis and job design is done in such a
manner that it fulfils the human resource requirements of the firm effectively (Thompson,
2017). Moreover, Walmart has policies that help it facilitate employee retention for
developing a skilled and experience workforce for the firm. Furthermore, Walmart has
formulated HR policies that facilitate training and development of the employees to enhance
the performance of its workforce. Additionally, Walmart has policies for compensating the
employees in terms of basic pay, employee benefits and incentives (Thompson, 2017). These
policies and strategies have been crucial in the success of Walmart as one of the biggest
corporations in the world (Bergdahl, 2010). However, their policy relating to employee
wages has been criticised for being below the average minimum hourly wage in the US
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(Thompson, 2017). In addition to that, Walmart has also been criticised for its sub-par
approach to training its staff in relation to customer service, poor working conditions, cutting
job hours to keep employees part-time in order to save money; and bad as well as rude
management of in-store staff, and discrimination in terms of gender (Clifford, 2011;
Torrance, 2021). Consequently, Walmart has also faced various lawsuits in relation to its HR
policies regarding healthcare benefits, employment rights and for it usage of undocumented
labour. These factors have also led to Walmart being listed as a bad company to work for by
The CEO Magazine (Merrill, 2021). Therefore, it can stated that the HR policies and
strategies of Walmart need improvement in order to improve its brand image in the market.
New HR policies
Improvement in employee retention
Employee retention is a crucial factor for organisations to function efficiently in the market.
Employee retention refers to the measures and strategies adopted by a company to encourage
its employees to work for them for longer durations of time (Cloutier et al., 2015). On the
contrary, employee turnover refers to the number of employees who left a company over a
certain period of time (Merwe, 2022). The primary objective behind retention measures and
strategies is to prevent talented and skilled workforce from leaving the organisation (Singh,
2019). Moreover, it can be costly for a firm to recruit and replace an employee who has left a
job position. According to an estimate, replacing an employee can cost half to two times the
annual salary of a particular job position (Merwe, 2022). According to Merwe (2022), 4.25
million people resigned from their jobs in January 2022 in the US, an increase from the
previous year’s figure of 3.3 million. Thus, it can be seen that employee retention is a crucial
issue for companies operating in the market.
It is important to consider reasons for which employee leave a company before suggesting
strategies for improvement in employee retention. Employees leave a job due to various
factors including better job opportunities elsewhere, higher education, job dissatisfaction,
poor relationship with team members or manager, firing from the job, or for personal reasons
(Cloutier et al., 2015). All these factors, except personal reasons, can be tackled using
appropriate measures by the HR department of a firm.
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