HR strategic plan for Walmart

HR Strategic Plan for Wal-Mart
Student’s Name
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Introduction
Wal-Mart started as a single store to sell more products at an affordable price. The owner did not envision the tremendous growth the organization was to achieve 50 years from the time of its establishment. Currently, Wal-Mart has close to 260 million customers globally and 11, 500 stores spread in 28 countries. It has employed 2.3 million workers and generates annual revenue of about $482.2 billion (King & Chicken, 2015). The organization is, however, faced with challenges regarding the salaries and union employee representation that ruin its reputation. These challenges are threatening the future sustainability of the organization; in this regard, the paper will discuss a Human Resource strategic plan that can be implemented for the company to deal with the issues likely to hinder its future prosperity.
Business Needs
Wal-Mart organization is driven by the urge of providing its products at affordable prices. It aims at extending its distribution from 28 countries to the entire globe (Hassan, Sistani & Raju, 2014). Additionally, it objects to improve the worker-company relationship to avoid high turnover rate. These business needs are the driving force for Wal-Mart since its time of establishment. The needs will be attained through the following strategies: the company is involved in product analysis to identify the cheapest suppliers in the market and sign business deals; this will enable the organization to maintain its products at the lowest price in the market.

Additionally, the organization can import products from countries where the law materials are relatively cheap.
It will attain the global expansion through evaluating the cultural norms of different countries and supplying goods that are acceptable and widely used in a specific society. Additionally, it will utilize promotional media that are culturally accepted in the regions to ensure many people are aware of the stores and can access them within their country. The HR will reduce the turnover rate among workers within the first year of employment through initiating motivational factors and provide clear communication channels for discussion of issues that influence the working conditions.
Organizational Business Strategy and Goals
Wal-Mart has a pricing business strategy where it provides products at reduced prices relative to its competitors. It ensures the prices are low through buying goods in bulk from industries and distributing them in its stores. The organization packages the bulk goods in smaller units using materials that are environmentally friendly and cheap; this contributes to its low prices in the market.
The organization offers lower salaries and wages to its employees compared to its competitors to reduce the general expenses and avoid incurring losses. However, this strategy has resulted in high turnover rate. The organization does not provide complete health plans such that the workers have to pay for some expenses in case of health problems in the family. Also, it partially caters for insurance policies such as safety. These strategies negatively influence the employee-company relationship, but enable it to make huge profits annually through maintaining a positive relationship with customers.
The organization has important goals that include improving its working terms; this will be attained through evaluating the employee needs in the organization and initiating practices that motivate them such as training. It has a goal of shifting the salary burden to the consumers to be able to provide quality salaries for its employees; this will be attained through raising the prices of certain commodities in the organization and advertising its products using the internet to increase clients (McDermott, Conway, Rousseau & Flood, 2013). Higher prices will provide a greater profit margin, which will allow it to pay the employees better salaries without incurring losses.
HR Imperatives
The HR has the goal of increasing the number of employees in the organization and reducing turnover rate significantly. The high turnover rate is a challenge to the organization since it loses quality workers to its competitors that may be paying slightly better (King & Chicken, 2015). The turnover rate also reduces the company revenue since constant recruitment is required in addition to training of newly qualified employees.
Its objectives include minimizing boycotts and strikes in addition to improving the employee-organization relationship to initiate negotiations and understanding. The employees are constantly complaining about the lack of representation in trade unions for the collective bargain, which is against the company policies; this threatens the future of the organization. However, through the objective of initiating negotiations and understanding, the employees will be able to agree and work within the policy provisions. Additionally, the organization will be able to provide feedback on factors such as lack of full medical coverage for the employees.
The mission statement for Wal-Mart organization is ‘saving money for people to improve lifestyles’ (Stankevičiūtė, Grunda & Bartkus, 2012). The organization aims at attaining the mission statement through initiating strategies that maintain its products cheaper in the market. For instance, the HR department can develop a stronger bargaining plan for its suppliers so as to obtain goods at a lower cost compared to its competitors.
Wal-Mart’s vision statement is ‘to be a good retailer for both consumers and employees’. This can be attained and sustained through availing products requested by clients within the shortest time possible. It breaks bulky goods for consumers, which caters for convenience and affordability. Also, the company is able to maintain a positive relationship with its clients (McDermott et al., 2013). For the employees, the HR will provide a feedback plan in the company. Strategize on providing medical coverage for the employee families and insuring them against their safety at the workplace.
Gaps in HR
The HR has gaps in proving quality salaries for its employees despite this being a strategy to ensure it does not make losses. The salary gap is determined through assessing the current payment rates for the competitor companies in the industry and comparing them to Wal-Mart’s. There is a gap in maintaining a positive relationship with the employees, which is reflected through the 70% turnover rate; this gap affects the organization through increasing annual expenses in addition to wasting time and resources through engaging is recruitment process regularly (Huang & Yu, 2015). The HR has a gap in employee talent and skill identification in the sense that it has not been able to evaluate and determine the respective talents of its workers for better placement at the workplace. Talented employees are intrinsically motivated to work regardless of the wages and salaries offered in an organization. Therefore, if Wal-Mart could focus on identifying and nurturing employee talents, then the issues of salaries and boycotts will not be bothering the workers, in addition, the turnover rate will decline.
Cultural Gap Analysis
Wal-Mart organization has a culture of anti-unionism in the sense that it does not allow its employees to join unions. The HR management perceives that the unions exploit the organizations through forcing them to pay high salaries that the company cannot afford; in this regard, there is a gap between the HR and trade unions that has resulted in constant boycotts. The HR team observes cultural diversity in the organization in the sense that most races in America are represented both in the management and low paying positions. The organization also has a gap in dealing with people from low and high cultural contexts. For instance, there is no strategy that guides the employees on how to interact with people from the high-context based on their traits that embrace listening to speaking (Huang et al., 2015). These result in HR treating the employees that are in the higher and lower contexts the same way leading to misunderstandings.
Operational Gap Analysis
The HR does not honor some of the employee terms of service such as paying the workers on time. For instance, in 2012, the organization delayed paying the employees for 3 months. The workers reported the issue to the labor court that forced the organization to pay arrears of up to $ 50 million; this affected its normal operation (Stankevičiūtė et al., 2012). There is a gap between the employees and management in the sense that there is no strategy developed to measure the satisfaction state of workers with reference to attainability of objectives. Also, there is a gap between the global and regional market since it has not developed strategies of penetrating the international market effectively.
People Gap Analysis
The Wal-Mart HR department contains people with good interpersonal skills, they have comprehensive knowledge in labor management, it is trustworthy, it is objective oriented and also it trains and mentors employees. However, there is a gap between the management and employees in the sense that feedback channels are not effective. The management is sometimes unaware of the complaints of employees for them to act accordingly. There is a gap between employee safety and working environment; in this regard, the workers are not protected against injury in the organization which results in fear. There is a gap in determining the employee skills and knowledge since the HR does not conduct regular analysis on the academic qualification of the employees. The validity of training programs is not also evaluated based on its intended objectives. Additionally, there is a gap between the staff potential and the organizational objective. The HR should develop strategies for bridging these gaps to prevent inefficiencies.
System Gap Analysis
The organization system involves distributing products from the stores to clients. However, there are gaps that reduce the efficiency of the process and result in loss of customers. For instance, there is a gap between the clients and the employees supplying products due to poor communication that results in challenging situations during deliveries. There is a gap in the product advertisements channel and the target market; the organization has not embraced internet media in promoting its products globally, which limit the annual sales volume. There is also a gap between the market analysis and the actual target group; this is reflected through the company’s challenge to penetrate the global market through identifying and dealing with cultural barriers (McDermott et al., 2013). These gaps are critical and a potential threat to the performance of the organization in the future. Also, they are a source of opportunities for expansion and acquisition of a large market share.
Final SWOT analysis
Strengths
Fully staffed
Knowledge about operational policies
Good customer relationship
Satisfied with organizational procedures Weaknesses
Unable to represent employees properly
Untimely payments
Opportunities
Stable leadership
Service expansion
Integrating talent in the management system
Secure new talent Threats
Compliance with employee policies
Health care costs
High turnover rate
Budgetary constraints Marketplace uncertainty

Suggested Approach
Wal-Mart HR plans to execute some initiatives for its sustainability in the market. For instance, the HR plans to access the working force; this will involve identifying the employee skills, abilities and knowledge (King & Chicken, 2015). It will be attained through evaluating the workers’ education levels, certifications, and strengths. Additionally, the HR will seek to establish the talents of every employee. The talents can be identified through engaging the workers in conversations and checking their personal files as submitted during the job application. The initiative of accessing employees will be aimed at establishing motivational factors of individual employees for improved productivity.
The HR plans to execute worker development initiative; this will involve identifying possible ways of improving employee skills and knowledge through considering the company goals, talking to employees, deciding the skills the employees require and applying the new skills at the workplace. The organization will incur some expenses in executing this initiative. However, it aims at improving the quality of labor in the organization, which can be utilized as a competitive advantage.
The organization plans to execute a gap analysis; this will involve assessing the current trends in the market and the limitations the company and its competitors are facing that hinder them from controlling a large market share. To identify the gap, the organization will also assess the job descriptions to establish if they match the current expectations in terms of skills and requirements. The HR will review the employee handbook to establish employee compliance to employment policies and laws (Thompson, Peteraf, Gamble, Strickland III, & Jain, 2013). The HR will seek to evaluate the business performance and make necessary changes in employee benefits and rewards. Additionally, the company will assess the training programs to ensure desirable skills and experiences are transmitted to the employees. The goal of the initiative is to develop a workforce that is motivated to attain the vision and mission of the organization. The initiative objective is to make the organization important in the current market.
The organization plans to open and utilize communication channel; this will be attained through identifying a cheap, accessible and reliable channel such as email or Skype that will be able to facilitate information flow. However, the company intends to encourage the employees to exhibit a trustworthy relationship so that communication can be efficient (Huang et al., 2015). Every employee will be connected to the local network that will allow sharing of data; in this regard, the managers will provide direct feedback to employees. Instances where the supervisors and departmental managers take advantage of the present situation and overwork the employees will be eliminated. The opening and using of communication channel initiative is important in monitoring employee attitudes and preventing problematic situations that are solvable through negotiation.
The HR plans to review the company policies that involve work allocation and supervision; in this regard, new policies will be developed that allow an individual employee to work within a scheduled timetable or serve a specific number of clients per day. The new policies will also outline the ethical principles to be followed by every employee at the workplace. The initiative will be important in enabling the organization to deal with issues of mishandling of employees and clients as well promote positive customer relations.
Recommendations and Success Factors
The following recommendations will be important in dealing with the issues facing Wal-Mart HR: the organization should review its recruitment criteria such that talent is considered the primary factor in selecting suitable workers. Talented employees are motivated and will work under minimal supervision to ensure the organization improves its current market share. The change in market share will be used to evaluate the success factor.
Wal-Mart should shift its marketing and promotional strategies to online based platforms; in this regard, it should use social sites that are connected to the internet to identify the target audience for its products. Additionally, it should consider the internet as a potential source of competitive advantage (McDermott et al., 2013). In order to measure the success factor of this initiative, the demand for goods and reviews on the company website should be frequently evaluated.
The organization should conduct a regular assessment of the procedure and attainability of the objectives and goals. The HR will be able to determine mistakes in the process of attaining goals and make the necessary changes. Also, it will identify the goals that have been attained and inform the employees as a way of motivating them. The success factor for this initiative will be comparing the mission and vision statements with the attained goals to establish the correlation relationship.
The Organization should motivate employees to be focused on clients; it will achieve this through engaging in research and analyzing the market characteristics effectively (Huang et al., 2015). The market features will provide a clue on the strategies to utilize during the actual selling of products to the clients. Additionally, the employees should be involved in training programs that provide them with experience in attracting customers. The successes factor for this initiative is to check the feedback from long-term clients regarding the quality of service they enjoy.
Conclusion
The issues affecting Wal-Mart such as constant employee boycotts and high turnover rate are closely linked to the HR department. For instance, the employees are not provided with full medical cover forcing them to rely on Medicaid programs. The employees are paid poorly compared to those in the competitor firms; this encourages them to seek opportunities elsewhere. The organization does not allow the employees to be part of trade unions for better bargaining power. Wal-Mart delays the employee salaries. Also, it does not utilize the talents and interests of employees in ensuring quality productivity.
Wal-Mart has however strategized to deal with the challenges facing its HR department through planning to initiate internet marketing platforms that allow employees to reach many clients globally. It is forecasting to install communication platforms for improved feedback within the organization. It is planning to review its employee policies to ensure they are fair and client oriented. The organization is preparing to analyze the current skills in the market and use them to initiate relevant training programs for the employees. Also, it is scheduling to consider talent and educational qualification as the basic factors during recruitment of employees. In order to prevent Wal-Mart from entering into crisis, I call upon the HR department to implement the provisions of the plan within the shortest time possible.

References
Hassan, S. M., Sistani, A. J., & Raju, R. S. (2014). Top Online Shopping E-companies and their Strength and Weakness (SWOT). Research Journal of Recent Sciences ISSN, 2277, 2502.
Huang, J., & Yu, J. I. A. (2015). Wal-Mart Development in Chinese Market: Problems and Countermeasures—Based on the Enterprise Culture and Ethics. International Business and Management, 10(2), 11-15.
King, B., & Chicken, K. F. (2015). Marketing Plan. Marketing, 7, 2.McDermott, A. M., Conway, E., Rousseau, D. M., & Flood, P. C. (2013). Promoting effective psychological contracts through leadership: The missing link between HR strategy and performance. Human Resource Management, 52(2), 289-310.
Stankevičiūtė, E., Grunda, R., & Bartkus, E. V. (2012). Pursuing a cost leadership strategy and business sustainability objectives: Wal-Mart case study. Economics and Management, 17(3), 1200-1206.
Thompson, A., Peteraf, M., Gamble, J., Strickland III, A. J., & Jain, A. K. (2013). Crafting & Executing Strategy 19/e: The Quest for Competitive Advantage: Concepts and Cases. McGraw-Hill Education.