Managing People: HRM Practices and Walmart Analysis Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Human Resource Management (HRM) practices, emphasizing their significance in organizational success and competitive advantage. It delves into the core functions of HRM, including employee recruitment, training, communication, and performance management. The report uses the Pfeffer model to explain how these practices contribute to organizational effectiveness. It then examines the HRM strategies implemented by Walmart, a major retail organization, highlighting its approach to HR planning, employee selection, communication, training, and performance evaluations. The report also addresses the challenges faced by HR departments in retail environments, such as employee engagement and mapping. The report concludes by underscoring the importance of aligning HRM practices with business objectives to achieve superior organizational performance. This assignment is contributed by a student to be published on the website Desklib, a platform which provides all the necessary AI based study tools for students.

Running head: MANAGING PEOPLE
Managing people
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Introduction
Human Resource management is an organisational component that is crucial for
organising and integrating the human capital in a workforce. In this report, a detailed analysis
of HRM and the various characteristics of HRM have been accomplished and the various
ways the HRM practices can help in delivering competitive advantage to the companies have
been highlighted. In the context of Walmart, a retail organisation, how these HRM practices
and strategies have generated value have been communicated. The various challenges that the
HR department in retail organisations like Walmart faces in their operations have also been
highlighted.
Discussion
HRM is an organisational tool that is primarily responsible for the management of
organisational activities related to human capital like hiring, training, motivation,
communication, administration as well as overall development. In this context, it is
noteworthy that the employees have the maximum contribution towards the realisation of
organisational goals. HRM is generally pervasive in nature. The impact or responsibilities if
HRM in a company are not confined to any individual employee or department. Rather,
Albrecht et al. (2015), argues that HRM applies to all layers of the organisational framework.
The department of HRM in an organisation works for the people in the office and helps them
to organise and integrate to fulfil the organisational goals. All crucial factors regarding
production have to be upgraded in order to be efficient enough to cope up with the changes in
the macro environment. This is why, Amarakoon, Weerawardena and Verreynne (2016),
informs that the employee base of an organisation also requires rigorous training at regular
intervals, all over development and necessary replacements in order to comply with the next
level of organisational transition.

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One important characteristic of HRM is the personnel aspect. The HR department
undertakes a process called Human Resource planning whereby the company identifies the
amount of vacancies present in the respective departments of the office.
Another crucial responsibility of HR M is recruitment as well as selection of
employees. Prior to selection of the employees, the procedure of job analysis is conducted by
the HR department, whereby, Zikic (2015), informs that the HR department collects data
regarding the kind of job role that is required against the designations against which the new
employees are going to be appointed. The HR departments then creates a brief of the
specifications and posts advertisements and other promotional activities regarding the
recruitment drive. The selection is the following process whereby the HR selects the most
deserving candidates.
Another major characteristic of the HR functions are team communications. In this
context, the HR departments holds manly two kinds of session. These are causal meetings
and brain storming meetings. The Human Resource managers also practice the skills of
active listening. This requires adaptation of various methods of personal and team based
communication in order to identify the issues that the employees (personally or as a team) are
facing. In the words of Armstrong and Taylor (2014), an HR manager should most certainly
be assertive and capable of making win-win negotiations. This is because the HR is liable to
look after the interest of the organisation as well as the employees also.
Discipline management is a very crucial aspect of HRM. Maintaining discipline is not
merely sharing feedback with the concerned employees. It requires the HR managers to
collect information from various organisational sources regarding any particular employee.
Following that the employee should be communicated regarding the areas where he or she is
lacking and what are the negative impacts of the flaws committed by the person on the

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organisational performance (Manroop, 2015). The parameters that HR managers generally
follow are:
i) What effects are incurred by the poor or good quality of the deliverables that are supplied
to the client from en employee’s end?
ii) Does the concerned issue have any adverse impact on the team’s cohesiveness?
iii) Does any issue regarding any particular employee is concerned with deliberate
undermining of the mutual interest of other team members?
The effectiveness and the competitive advantage of HRM in organisational aspect can
be explained by means of the Pfeffer model of HRM. Seven HRM practices with crucial
implications towards organisational aspects would be discussed here. The process of selection
and employee recruitment is the first important practice in an organisation. The second
practice is setting training program for the employees. The third practice is a recent
innovative HRM model referred to as Performance based Pay system. This model is related
to judging how much person and team production are contributing towards fulfilment of
organisational objectives (Jiang & Liu, 2015). The best contributors are monthly or yearly
recognised and awarded. The fourth important practice is team work. The HR employees
should take the responsibility of breaking through the hierarchal structure of the organisation
and give the work groups design and plan how they would supply the deliverables in
consultations with the team members. This whole process s facilitated by the employees. It
have been observed that the companies that have observed this mode of operations rather than
the stereotyped and conventional hierarchal work flow structure have been able to create
more adept and responsible taskforce and achieve a client satisfaction rate of more than 70%
(Solnet, Kralj & Baum, 2015). The fifth practice communication with internal and external
stakeholders through sharing of information, via internet chat rooms and face to face

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communications. The sixth strategy is eradication of status quo in the workplace. Examples
like removing special parking facilities for the employees of top management in an office can
be effective in this context. The HR management of the office should employ more similar
strategies. The last strategy is providing employment security to the employees. Some real
life experiences can be contextualised in order to make certain that these practices have
impact on organisational performance also. According to Al Ariss, Cascio, and Paauwe,
(2014), business firms gains effective development in terms of delivering the organisational
goals if they pertain to these strategies of effective HRM management. In the context of
sufficing the business needs of the organisations, the HRM practices practised by Walmart
would be reflected in this essay. The HR department of the company most organised. There is
an internal HR departmental manager in every store of the company. The HR planning
method is communicated by the corporate HR department of the company to all the HR
manager’s desk at all the stores. Then the manager’s feedback is accepted regarding the
probability of reaping benefits from application of the strategies in the respective stores. After
that, any decision is taken by the HR department. As opined by Iriyama, Kishore and
Talukdar, (2016), this certainly implies that there are different levels of HR planning in the
company. Another important aspect of planning is adaptation to software in order to automate
the procedure of implication of any organisational change. The company at first gather
employee data from the software which is connected by the centralised network which
collects the data. Thereby the software analyses and reveals the trends of HR management.
Keeping an eye on the report, the corporate HR department takes any decision to implement
change. In case of employee shortage also, the company also follows the feed from the same
software. The HR department demarcates which department will gain strength as an impact
of new hiring and which ones will have surplus employees.

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In case of Walmart also, the procedure of Job analysis as well as job designing is of
immense value. The organisational design of Walmart is an amalgamation of hierarchal
centralisation and decentralisation (Chadwick, Super & Kwon, 2015). The headquarters have
a certain level of jurisdiction over all Walmart stores. The corporate HR department
maintains centralised control of the discretions of the respective employees. However the
decisions and the implementations of the departmental HR managers are also respected by
the company. The indigenous working patterns and working model that have been set by the
HR department is not disturbed by the central HR department except vital issues.
The HR department of Walmart avails the matching method of employee selection.
The company collects the qualitative information of the employees and also gathers feed
from the supervisors regarding the current organisational needs. Therefore, Hunter, Saunders
and Constance, (2016), opines that the actual needs of the company are compared with the
capabilities that the human resources would be able to share with the organisation. The gap
between the two is also calculated.
The HR department of Walmart mainly emphasizes on basic sales management skills
and knowledge as sales personnel are mostly recruited by the company. However on the other
hand, The HR managers’ conducts specific sessions in order to understand how much are the
candidates capable to be miscible with the present workforce where he or she would be
placed. There are several communication channels that are being utilised by the HRM
regarding every step of the recruitment process. That is why the choice of employees are so
perfect.
Another important policy of HR management at the Walmart is that of information
sharing. As discussed earlier information sharing can be accomplished through various
medium. The most preferred medium for the sharing of information is the feedback sharing

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policy. Liu et al. (2017), opines that the process is not however one sided. The management
can share negative or positive feedback to the employees regarding their individual and team
contribution. However, the employees also have the authority to communicate with the upper
management through the process of sharing feedback regarding the management at every
departmental stores. The HR practices discussed above are also reflected in the employee
training and the employee retention activities of the company. The needs analysis model is
also used by the company in case of the employees. The HR department analyses if the
business needs that a current set of employees are working upon meets the qualifications that
they have excelled in (Shammot, 2014). Again, the HR managers also looks for if the
employment conditions suffices for the needs of the employees. An instance can be provided.
An experience employee might join the firm because the company have a certain level of
brand reputation and also offers high pay scale. Hence the HR looks after the fact that they
get their expected wage rate, or at least something that is agreeable from both sides, thus
establishing a win-win situation.
The HRM of the company also have a crucial role to play in the performance
management of the work teams and the employees as individuals also. The company
measures the level of performance of the employees based on some performance levels. At
the end of the year, the HR observes the level achieved by the work groups or the employees
in general. Based on this, the employee appraisals take place in the company. This model of
employee appraisal is referred to as the micro tailored procedure of appraisal.
There is stratification of compensation at Walmart. In the words of Nieves and
Quintana, (2018), the compensations are partly based upon the performance of the workers.
The HR department matches the pay grades of the workers along with their employee levels.

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The HR department of big organisations like Walmart also faces a large number of
challenges also. In retail industry the interaction of staff and customers is a must. The HR
department is always active regarding briefing the staff regarding various protocol of
customer interaction. However, many employees often fail to follow protocol regarding
customer interactions. In that case, Chuang, Jackson and Jiang (2016), opines that they
accord for a low rate of employee engagement in spite of dedicated performance. In that case
the parameters of performance evaluation on the part of the HRM are not justifiable.
Besides, the HR department often faces to accomplish successful employee mapping.
Since the corporate HR department of the company relies more on the departmental HR
managers, the incapability of one or more HR managers to convey the issue with the
workforce creates a major discrepancy among the workforce. The kind and standard of
training required by the employees goes unacknowledged.
A new sales channels in the form of e-commerce is now developed by many retail
corporations like Walmart. Previously in absence of such media the customer interaction of
the employees could easily be mapped. However nowadays the presenting ability along with
the supply of deliverables holds a unique value in the organisation. In the context of
deliveries, the HR department is not able to monitor the employee’s performances. The
feedback of the customers are the only option in that regard.
The retail HRs always operate with the motivation to appoint staff who are very much
oriented to pursue the customer to buy products and are ready to accept flexible working
hours and lean payment during periods of low sale (Angrave et al. 2016). However lack of
employee communications or a wrong recruitment often leads to various issues within the
workforce. This also leads to a conflict of work role among the HR departments. This is
because the departmental HR managers have almost no influence over the recruitment

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process. However the issue resulting out of wrong recruitment have to be handled entirely by
the departmental managers.

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Conclusion