Wal-Mart Practices
HR Practices of Wal-Mart
The article, “How the HR division at Wal-Mart drives the company’s success through people” is about their HR strategy for their competitive advantage. It is written by previous Wal-Mart director of people, Michael Bergdahl (Bergdahl, 2010). It outlines in brief detail seven key strategies that Bergdahl believes are the most important for Wal-Mart’s success.
In the article, it states Wal-Mart employs more than two million employees around the world (Bergdahl, 2010). They face huge HR challenges and business risks by being the world’s largest employer. Wal-Mart believes employees are the common organizational bridge that ties all of its strategies and tactics together to insure the achievement of the company’s goals (Bergdahl, 2010). This is how they help reduce the risk of business failure and drive the company’s success through people. The executives of Wal-Mart have seven overriding strategies based on price, operations, culture, key item/products, expenses, talent, and service (Bergdahl, 2010). The only way they believe these strategies can be achieved is by aligning them with their HR practices.
The first strategy of Wal-Mart’s price advantage is simple. It is stated as ‘to provide value for its customer’s hard earned money (Bergdahl, 2010).’ The HR strategy is to focus all employees on lowering operation costs. Any success in lowering costs is then passed along to the customers in lower prices. This is Wal-Mart’s biggest competitive advantage.
The second strategy is focusing on operational success. Wal-Mart has a very lean staffing level but maintain high productivity. This is due to HR’s role to focus leadership and employees on continuous learning, continuous improvement, superior execution, employee empowerment, and employee ownership designed to create synergistic teamwork (Bergdahl, 2010). In addition, HR needs to keep employees operationally accountable for customer service, expense control, theft control, and stocking levels.
The article, “How the HR division at Wal-Mart drives the company’s success through people” is about their HR strategy for their competitive advantage. It is written by previous Wal-Mart director of people, Michael Bergdahl (Bergdahl, 2010). It outlines in brief detail seven key strategies that Bergdahl believes are the most important for Wal-Mart’s success.
In the article, it states Wal-Mart employs more than two million employees around the world (Bergdahl, 2010). They face huge HR challenges and business risks by being the world’s largest employer. Wal-Mart believes employees are the common organizational bridge that ties all of its strategies and tactics together to insure the achievement of the company’s goals (Bergdahl, 2010). This is how they help reduce the risk of business failure and drive the company’s success through people. The executives of Wal-Mart have seven overriding strategies based on price, operations, culture, key item/products, expenses, talent, and service (Bergdahl, 2010). The only way they believe these strategies can be achieved is by aligning them with their HR practices.
The first strategy of Wal-Mart’s price advantage is simple. It is stated as ‘to provide value for its customer’s hard earned money (Bergdahl, 2010).’ The HR strategy is to focus all employees on lowering operation costs. Any success in lowering costs is then passed along to the customers in lower prices. This is Wal-Mart’s biggest competitive advantage.
The second strategy is focusing on operational success. Wal-Mart has a very lean staffing level but maintain high productivity. This is due to HR’s role to focus leadership and employees on continuous learning, continuous improvement, superior execution, employee empowerment, and employee ownership designed to create synergistic teamwork (Bergdahl, 2010). In addition, HR needs to keep employees operationally accountable for customer service, expense control, theft control, and stocking levels.
References: Bergdahl, M. (2010, September 21). HR Magazine. Retrieved May 4, 2012, from How the HR division at Wal-Mart drives the company 's success through people: http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/hro/analysis/1018448/how-hr-division-wal-mart-drives-companys-success-people