Submitted By:

Aishwarya Mittal-19PGDMHR02
Bhavya Gupta- 19PGDMHR10
Gargeyi N.-19PGDMHR29
Harshit Pandey-19PGDMHR19
Strategic Human Plabita Dey Sarkar19PGDMHR33
Sakshi Malhotra-19PGDMHR44
Resource Vini Nigam- 19PGDMHR63

Management
Project
Submitted to:
Prof. Umesh Bamel
 Acknowledgement

It gives us immense pleasure in bringing out the research of the project on Walmart’s
Strategic Human Resource practices.
Firstly, we would like to thank our teacher and guide professor, Prof. Umesh Bamel who
gave us their valuable suggestions and ideas. He encouraged us to work on this project.
We are grateful to all involved in this project as without their inspiration and valuable
suggestion it would not have been possible to develop the project within the prescribed time.

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 Table of Contents

1 Acknowledgement 1

2 Introduction 3

3 History of Walmart 4

4 Current HR strategies and Strategic options at Walmart 7

5 Strategy Analysis (Walmart and Competitors) 8

6 Issues and Recommendations 13

7 Investment Decision 14

8 Citations 16

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 Introduction
Walmart Inc. is an American multinational retail corporation. It has its headquarters
in Bentonvillle Arkansas and operates a chain of hypermarkets, discount department stores,
and grocery stores. Walmart was founded by Sam Walton in 1962 and was incorporated on
October 31, 1969. Presently, Walmart has over 11,484 stores and clubs in 27 countries,
operating under 56 different names.

Walmart has proved to showcase effective large-scale human resource management and has
been a great example considering the business has millions of employees all over the world.
Walmart proves to be one of the biggest organizations in the world in terms of its size, financial
performance and overall business value. They strive to satisfy their business expectations and
requirements through its human resources. Walmart pays huge attention to how its activities
like the organizational processes that are internal to the company provide support to its human
resources.

Walmart has been facing issues regarding employee wages and in management of its massive
employee base in the US as well as internationally.
• Human Resource practices in Walmart have been termed as a continuous paradox.
• Even though Walmart has been extremely successful in generating enthusiasm, a great
level of involvement and empowerment amongst employees which is unusual among
large retail chains, there is an intense pressure for cost reduction and the sales growth
frequently result in cases of dissatisfaction in employees.
• Issues related to unpaid overtime and failure to ensure that workers received rest breaks
also come up.
• Since Walmart is highly focused on cost leadership, the human resource practices need
to take into consideration the possibilities of such issues arising in future.

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 History of Walmart
After World War II, large retail outlets offering a broad range of products called Discount
Stores, started appearing in the US. Sam Walton being an operator of Ben Franklin variety
stores always believed that, by providing low prices, Discount Stores could be viable in smaller
communities as well. A major hiccup for Walmart for distribution. To tackle this, their only
alternative was to start building their own distribution centers in order to buy large volumes at
competitive prices and store that excess merchandize. In 1970, Walton built his first
distribution centre, which was financed by taking
the company public. The foundation of Walmart’s expansion strategy was to replicate this
structure of huge distribution hubs that were serving over 100 discount stores. Entering a new
area, Walmart built a few stores that were served initially from a nearby distribution centre.
Once a critical mass of stores had been established, Walmart would build a new distribution
centre.

Walmart operated and experimented with different store formats

Supercenters: These stores had large formats. They provided a combination of a grocery market
with a discount store along with other specialty units. These units included stores for
eyeglasses, hair salons, etc. which were open throughout the day and all days of the week.
Sam’s Warehouse Clubs: These were wholesale outlets and required a membership. Products
in these were offered in multipacks and catering-size packs. These had minimal service.
Walmart Express: These were small convenience stores which were launched in 2013
Walmart was also able to build a substantial presence online through its websites. This presence
was enhanced through their music download services and pharmacies present online. A
prominent feature in this digital strategy was the integration of the online transactions that were
web-based with the physical experience so that if the customers wanted to do a pick up from
their local Walmart store, they could do that easily.

International Expansion for Walmart

Walmart started its international expansion in 1991 by entering into a joint venture with the
largest retailer in Mexico, Cifra SA, by opening discount stores and Sam’s Clubs in various
Mexican cities. Walmart entered six overseas countries by the year 2000. There was no
standard pattern in terms of Walmart’s overseas expansion. It entered either through either a
joint venture or by acquiring an existing retailer or sometimes through a greenfield entry. These
expansions overseas have provided Walmart with varying success. In countries of Mexico and
Canada, it proved to be highly successful. Walmart had to sell 85 of its stores to Metro after
eight years of losses, in Germany. Walmart had to withdraw from South Korea in 2006.
Walmart closed 30 stores in Japan, in October 2014. China was one of the biggest challenges
as well as the greatest opportunity for Walmart. In the highly politicizes market of China,
Walmart understood the challenge it had to face. Walmart had to close down 13 of its stores

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due to Bo Xilai, in Chongqing. Walmart’s strategy in China also involved integrating its
growing network of stores with its online presence. In every country that Walmart entered, it
had to adapt its stores and the entire retailing to the circumstances that were specific to each
country’s customer habits and preferences and other country specific environmental factors.

Sam Walton and His Strategy for Walmart

Walmart’s strategy and management style have always been in line with the philosophy and
values of its founder. Sam Walton had always been embodiment of the unique approach to
retailing that Walmart adopted, until his death in 1992. Even after his death, his values, beliefs,
sayings and business principles continued to be the guiding source for Walmart’s identity and
development. For Sam Walton, value for money was a principle to live by. The obsession of
undercutting his competitors was what drove his unending quest for achieving cost economies.
His attention to detail was legendary. As the CEO, his priorities lay with his employees,
customers, and all the operational details through which the he wanted to create value for them.
He shunned offices in favour of spending time in his stores. An extremely important factor in
his leadership was the relationship that he maintained with his employees. In an industry known
for low pay and tough working conditions, Walton created a unique spirit of motivation and
involvement. He believed in providing employees with a level of autonomy and decision-
making authority. He wanted to build a culture of trusting his employees but at the same time
keeping their performance in check. Even after his death, Sam Walton’s beliefs and values
became the foundation of Walmart’s operating principles.

• Service to their customers: Every associate, from their CEO to their hourly associates
in local stores are reminded daily that their customers are the reason as to why they are
working and to provide them with the greatest level of service.
• Respect for individuals: Walmart lays huge emphasis on providing respect to all the
associates, customers and other members of the community. This includes valuing and
recognizing the contributions made by every associate.
• Striving for excellence: Comprising of innovation through ongoing, continuous
improvement and by trying unique ways of doing things, working as an integrated team.

Sam Walton wanted to instil excitement and fun into a business that he thought everyone
considered as sterile. He wanted to emphasise on the fact that Walmart wishes to play an
important role in the well-being and happiness of its employees and customers.

Walmart’s Business

Walmart described its business as: Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. are designed to help people around
the world live better and save money anywhere and anytime. This, they want to achieve in all
types of experiences they offer, either in retail stores or through their digital and mobile
capabilities. They aim to create a highly customer-centric approach and also integrate the
digital and physical shopping experience through innovation. Physical retail encompasses their

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brick and mortar presence in each market where they operate. Digital retail is comprised of
their e-commerce websites and mobile commerce applications.

Price and Cost Philosophies

Their strategy which is to lead on price enables them to gain the trust of their employees by
providing them with a massive range of products under one roof at Everyday Low Prices
(EDLP). This also helps them foster a culture where there is mutual trust, diversity, integrity
and respect as well as which rewards these values fully. This is their pricing philosophy in
which they provide items that are priced at a low price every day in order to help their customers
trust that their prices will not fluctuate under frequent promotional activity. Their strong
commitment to control their expenses so as to transfer those cost savings to their customers
shows clearly in their Everyday Low Cost (EDLC) philosophy. The presence of digital and
physical experience provides customers access to their huge portfolio of products and
convenience. A great digital as well as physical shopping experience is one of the biggest
priorities for Walmart.

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 Current HR strategies and Strategic options at Walmart
Employees are the common organizational bridge connecting all the plans and methods of Wal-
Mart to ensure that the ambitious objectives of the business are accomplished. The only way
that managers in the company can do this is by aligning their corporate plans with their HR
practices. Walmart is achieving cost leadership through innovations in job programs to help it
reach exceptionally low labour costs. Walmart has managed to retain its leading competitive
edge due to low-cost HR practices.

To examine the HR practices at Walmart, we can choose the contingency perspective of

“best fit”. With this view, the individual HR practices can be selected based on the contingency
of the specific context of a company. Like Walmart has different corporate strategy with those
retailers with differentiation strategy.

(1) Recruitment-Walmart has tried its best to reduce the cost considering it has such a big
number of its employees. Walmart is quite significantly changing its labor model. Moving from
a near hire any live body and let them get on with it one to something where people are well
trained, well paid, and presumably of rather higher productivity.
(2) Training-From training perspective, Walmart considers its workers "associates," and
encourages managers to think of themselves as "servant leaders," that is, to motivate them to
support others while remaining focused on producing results in accordance with the values and
dignity of the company.
(3) Compensation- From the compensation management perspective, Walmart has shown
very aggressive HR policies and activities to fit the “low-cost” strategy. Walmart has several
factories in China, the products of which are labelled with the word Walmart. With this
approach, Walmart pays far less to Chinese labor in this "world factory" and gains some
benefits, so we could see how the corporate strategy of Walmart is just implemented intensively
with the human resources program
(4) Employee Benefit and Safety- Walmart’s HR policies are well aligned
with the corporate-level strategy. Employees at Walmart need to pay over the usual market
amount to avail these health benefits.
(5) Labor Relations - Finally, from the labor relations perspective, Walmart could not have
done better to show us how the contingency model of “best fitness” work. Because unionized
retail employees usually don't pay anything, Walmart has strict anti-union policies.

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 STRATEGY ANALYSIS
WALMART

Walmart follows the company level strategy of low-cost which is also integrated in their
employment policies which helps them to achieve extremely low employment costs. Through
all their HR strategies, they tried to maintain this as a predominant competitive advantage.

Due to the large scale of the Company, Walmart allows the individual stores to have their
own interpretations of the corporate HR policies. These policies are differentiated for
different locations. Majorly personnel planning and recruitment strategies vary based on the
location. Moreover, Walmart has an anti-unions policy everywhere other than China where
unionization is mandatory.

Analysis of HR Strategies and whether they add to the competitive

advantage:

Recruitment:

Walmart has a huge employee base and so they try their best to reduce cost while
recruitment. Recruitment is hence carried out using a decentralized system at the local level.
They hire using various sources but typically depend on sourcing locally. This enables them
to achieve local competitiveness along with reduction in costs.

They also aim to reduce turnover by following a combination of HR strategies based on

performance and status of the employee. The main guidance principle is to reduce financial
losses due to turnover.

Training:

Another HR domain that directly leads to Walmart fulfilling their competitive advantages is
through Training. Walmart conducts needs analysis to check how well the job fits the
employee as well as the business environment.

To bridge the technological training gap, they include various programs for employee
training. Their main focus is on performance of sales personnel wherein they prefer face-to-
face training programs to ensure the quality of service. The program’s effectiveness is also
measured through sales performance of the employees. Such targeted training programs aim
to achieve higher sales performance thereby achieving higher revenues.

Additionally, they aim to adjust employee behaviours to align them with the Company’s
corporate strategy of low cost. They have a “lock-in” policy during night shifts and also train

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employees to take lesser breaks. These strategies do lead to less shrinkages and reduced costs
however, their impact on employee morale can be debatable.

Compensation:

In terms of employee compensation, Walmart has followed very aggressive HR Policies to fit
their “low-cost” strategy. Walmart employees are paid comparatively low in comparison to
the market pay. This is also one of the reasons why they have resisted unionization of
Walmart employees. They paid much less to Chinese labours, which tells us how integrated
their corporate strategy is in their compensation policies.

They’ve increased their base pay in 2015-16 after facing extensive pressures internally as
well as externally.

Along with that, their compensation plans are highly incentive driven based on productivity
and performance. This challenges workers and significantly boosts performance to increase
revenue. However, this incentive pay is also only paid at the managerial level and not to rank
and file employees, which again leads to reduced costs for the company.

Employee Safety and Benefits:

The safety and benefits policy of Walmart was well aligned with the corporate level strategy
of maintaining a competitive advantage by being a low-cost retailer. In the US, on an
average, employees pay around 16% of the insurance premiums for healthcare. Unionized
employees, on the other hand pay next to nothing for the premiums. However, the percentage
of premium paid by the employees at Walmart increased from 36% in 1996 to 42% in 2001.
The HR managers at Walmart always try to fit their policies to the ‘low-cost’ strategy, and
Walmart has also had multiple accusations levied against them regarding them not providing
the necessary and affordable healthcare plans that are required to their employees.

Performance Management:

Again, in performance management also, Walmart’s strategies were aligned to the corporate
strategy of being a low-cost provider. Their goal for performance management was to
maximize the sales revenue. The majority of their focus is on the sales personnel of the
company, and they are regularly monitored to ensure that their productivity remains high.
However, due to a lack of focus on actually engaging the employees, so that they feel
committed to being highly productive, Walmart faces issues of low employee morale and
tardiness. These in turn adversely affect the firm’s financial performance. Ergo, the
performance management system at Walmart ultimately fails to add to the company’s
competitive advantage.

However, due to the highly demanding job designs that Walmart has, there are a host of legal
issues which arise from them. There have been reports of Walmart breaking the rules which
are set by the State, regarding the required time for breaks meals for employees. There have
also been reports of minors being made to work late, either for more than the appropriate
number of hours during a day, or during school hours.

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In career development too, Walmart tries to align its practices with the strategy of low-cost.
There have been reports of women being pushed to work in “female” departments, being paid
less than men, and being denied promotions, in order to keep the costs low.

Overall, in conclusion, when we see Walmart’s HR policies, we can definitely agree that they
are well aligned to their competitive strategy of being low-cost providers. However, they are
very far from being good, or even ethical HR practices. Not allowing employees to unionize,
discriminating against women, violating state laws regarding child-labor, breaks and meal
times, not providing proper affordable healthcare benefits, etc., all of these lead to a very
poor employer brand value, and thus we can say that although Walmart’s HR policies are
well aligned with the corporate strategy, however, their human resource management won’t
be a competitive advantage for them, unless they improve their practices holistically.

COMPETITORS
Sam Walton’s strategy was to analyse their competitors market which gave Walmart the
chance to gather learning from them and increase their profits by offering lower prices
compared to its competitors.

AMAZON

Amazon accounts for one of the biggest competitors of Walmart in terms of dominance in the
market. Amazon’s corporate strategy focuses on developing innovative ideas and solutions.
Amazon has a broader financial base in comparison to Walmart however, Walmart
employees around 2.2 million employees in contrast to the 575,000 employees at Amazon.
Both Companies have differentiated HR Policies in order to meet with their corporate
strategies. Amazon being a fast paced company is venturing into new markets due to which
they offer greater pay as well as require highly educated employees. Despite having
advantageous Recruitment and compensation Strategies, they have an extremely
competitive performance management strategy with high requirements. This may help them
achieve extremely high revenue but inevitably damages their company’s reputation leading
to higher employee turnover. Their strategies are more performance-oriented than people-
oriented.
1. Recruitment and Selection: Amazon follows a relatively strict process to recruit and
select candidates. It follows a standardised process which includes two compulsory
recruitment standards which are qualification and performance. This process follows
a thorough job competency mapping and analysis, personal specifications and job
descriptions.
2. Performance and Reward Management: It has a fairly controversial rewards system.
Its compensation consists of base salary and Restricted share Units. Other than that,
it also includes various employee welfare components and paid leaves. It also
promotes transparent feedback amongst employees to improve individual
performance. The incentives that Amazon provides depends upon the tenure of the
employees as well and they focus on providing more incentives to the employees
who have served for the company for 2 years or more. This reduces the huge cost
spent on employee retention.

COSTCO

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In direct contrast to Walmart’s policy of keeping the human resources costs low, Costco
pays high wages and benefits, which helps them in attracting a pool of high-quality
candidates. It covers 90% of the health insurance costs, compared to around 60% in
Walmart. Their philosophy is to put the employees first, which also increases the retention
rate. Hence, their HRM strategy is one of their competitive advantages.
Costco has been successful in creating a distinct culture which boasts a higher productivity
as well as better performance from its employees. It has constantly focused on employee
excellence which has resulted in a higher satisfaction level and happiness of its employees,
also led to a better performance and productivity. Costco showcases an excellent customer
base by making low price products accessible to customers which is very important in
attracting and retaining them. The reason why it is able to cater to such a huge customer
base is because of its happy employees and the level of satisfaction it generates among
them. It does this through keeping its wages competitive, higher than its competitor Walmart
and valuing its part-time workers as well. In addition to competitive pay, it also provides great
health benefits to its employees. A focus is laid on:
1) internal collaboration
2) training of employees
3) keeping the work pressure low to increase productivity and performance bettering
customer service and satisfaction
4) creating a learning environment to provide the best opportunities to its employees
for professional growth.

KROGER CO.

There is a war for talent, and Kroger Co. isn’t backing down when it said it’s hiring 11,000
new employees. Out of which, 2000 were for management positions. Kroger strongly
focuses on achieving product innovation thereby strengthening their brand image. In
Alignment to this, the company has been out on a war for talent inorder to recruit and retain
the people with an innovative bent of mind and high customer orientation (two primary
focuses of Kroger). The plan of Kroger Co. included developing talent among many other
modifications and is hiring veterans and military service members. Kroger Co. planned to
invest a whopping $500 mn dollar in training and development and wages. They extensively
also focus on providing more opportunities for their associates to be able to grow and
advance in their career. Their commitment to hiring veterans and military service members
makes them stand-out in terms of positive HR policies. The rivalry intensifies for Walmart, as
Kroger Co. employs 4,50,000 people, making it the third-largest employer after Walmart and
the United States Government.

TARGET

Target’s strategic human resource management follows a policy of a collective approach

towards all its human resource practices. It believes that this approach provides a
competitive advantage that is hard to replicate by other companies like Walmart. To fulfill this
philosophy, they focus on 4 HR processes and strategies which are the following:
1. Organisational culture: Target strives to create a friendly, fun and fast culture which
makes it unique from other discount retailers like Walmart and distinguishes its brand
as an employer. Employees are at every stage expected to provide a satisfying
customer experience as well as to their co-workers and teammates. The decisions
made by the employees must always be efficient and in a timely manner as well as
utilised all the resources to serve the internal and external customers well. These
values and characteristics of their culture helps them in enforcing this HR strategy.
2. Employee development: target embraces the strategy of employee development and
believes in creating concrete behaviours in their employees which would ultimately

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 lead them to achieve higher individual as well as organisational excellence. Target
focuses on developing core behaviours of employees, linkage of these behaviours to
performance, managing their bench strength well as well as a high degree of
succession planning.
3. Employee retention: it is one of the core HR strategies of Target. It focuses on
making the employees feel valued by the company, the level of satisfaction they
receive at their workplace and promote a culture that is performance based. This is
done through the use of pay for performance employee participation and input.
4. Staffing: Target believes in sustaining its workforce and developing the employees
from within the company. They do so by focusing on hiring quality candidates rather
than quantity and to fill vacancies in a short time period. Their main focus is on using
recruitment tools which define the critical skills that are required by the employee at a
particular position. The selection criteria includes a strong sense of culture, attitude,
organisational fit. They also use campus recruitment as a staffing method.

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 Issues and Recommendations
One of the very well-known facts about Walmart is that, as successful it had been in the US, it
failed miserably in Germany, South Korea, Japan and Brazil. Walmart, after it had been a huge
hit in the US, started globalization and expansion to more countries. It mimicked its successful
business stories and processes to the other countries. The problem lied here – the culture varies
from country to country. What has proven to be successful, is not guaranteed to work out in
other countries, as the environment varies, competitors vary, policies vary, and the whole
culture varies. Walmart, instead of duplication, should have studied the company’s
environment, policies and culture, before making an entry.

Consider the example of Germany, where the country has strict and higher minimum wages.
Now Walmart, which time and again emphasizes on low cost, and has been under a constant
attack for its pay and employee scheduling practices. In Germany, there are other
environmental restrictions such as that the stores should close at 8, a strict vacation time should
be given, and also involves higher management salaries, all of which would mean higher costs.

Also, employees should be trained accordingly so as to suit the culture of the country. American
culture is considered too “fast” for European countries, and friendly employees in a store might
actually not suit the conserved culture of European countries.

One of Walmart competitive edges lies in its rigorous working capital management. Increase
in wages would probably ensure the sustenance of it. Walmart has exploited its employees
through various HR policies to cut the costs. Such a move would generally imply higher
attrition, little loyalty among employees, lower job involvement and job satisfaction. Keeping
employees loyal, is important for an organization in gaining competitive advantage.

Consider the best-fit approach, that there is no universal way of making things work, and the
success achieved in one place, might not translate to the other place. Offer different tailored
training methods and modules to the employees from country to country. Conduct a
benchmarking survey, and establish a competitive pay to the employees. Offer rewards and
other benefits according to the environment of the business. Align the HR practices to the
culture of not only the organization, but the country they are expanding to.

Lowering the cost is what Walmart emphasizes upon, but it should not be at the cost of
employees. Human capital is a resource that can turn out to be a great competitive advantage,
and Walmart should leverage this, not only in US, but for other countries, it is planning to
expand to.

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 Investment Decision
Human resource is considered as a most important resource for an organization. Companies
across the world are focusing on catering the demands of the employees as Satisfied and
Motivated employees works more efficiently than the employees who are not satisfied with the
job. Before coming on the final decision of Investment, we would look into various HR
departments and its practices and try to decipher how it will impact the employee motivation
and productivity. The various Department are discussed below-

1. Recruitment & Selection- The company’s overall strategy is to save costs and to
achieve this company hire employees locally. It could be said that the company is
limiting its options when it comes to hiring people. The impact of having such a limited
pool of talent is that it fails to bring diversified people with various perspectives
onboard. This limits the aspects such a peer learning, out of the box thinking, innovative
discussions etc. Thus, it will hamper the learning and creativity of the employees.

2. Training & Development- Again as identified earlier the company follow very basic
training and development practices in order to reduce the cost of the company. Even
for Sales personnel, the company use the technique of face to face training. Walmart
could use creative training practices like Simulations, Group Discussions, Coaching &
Mentoring, Case Discussions etc. Training is a very essential part of Human Resource
management because it helps in employee development as it aims to fill the skills gaps.
This make the employee to perform more effectively and efficiently which eventually
increases company’s productivity and profitability. Also, it motivates the employees to
work as they feel that the company is putting efforts in their personal growth. Thus, it
could be said that Walmart is missing out in bringing out the maximum potential of its
employees.

3. Compensation- Walmart follows very aggressive pay strategies by paying below the
market rate. Also, company focuses on setting up it most of the factories in China as
labour is available at low cost, this is in line with company’s ‘Low-Cost’ strategy.
However, this might result is employee dissatisfaction as they will feel that they are not
compensated enough for the efforts they put in for the company. Highly dissatisfied
employee will look for better opportunities to work for which will increase the
employee turnover. Also, as the turnover will increase the recruitment costs will also
increase. This will overall impact the profits of the company.

4. Employee Benefits & Safety- Walmart’s HR policies are well aligned with the
corporate-level strategy. They make the employees pay hefty premiums for their
healthcare insurance plans, in order to cut down on costs. This is another factor which
might lead to employee demotivation & dissatisfaction. This will increase the employee
turnover which will impact the company’s profitability and producibility.

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How such practices impact the level of human capital in Walmart?

Let’s understand this question with the help of Two Theories before coming to the investment
decision. The theories are as follows-

1. Equity Theory- Equity Theory is directly

applicable to the Compensation practices
which are followed in Walmart. According to
the theory, an employee compares his
compensation with the effort he puts it, other
people of the organization and people in the
similar position in other organization.
As it can be seen from the figure, Inequitable
rewards leads to Dissatisfaction, Reduced
Output and eventually increases the employee
turnover. Thus, the company’s aggressive compensation strategy can hamper both
employees in terms of satisfaction as well the organization in terms of reduced output
and high turnover.

2. Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory- According

to the Two Factor theory there are several
factors leading to employee satisfaction or
dissatisfaction. Hygiene Factors are known as
maintenance factors as their absence leads to
employee unhappiness and dissatisfaction
while Motivators are known for their ability to
encourage employee to perform at their
maximum potential.
Walmart lacks in two of its major hygiene
factors which are Compensation (Providing below market level) & Employee Benefit
and Safety Policies (Premium higher than market level). This will lead to
dissatisfaction of employees.
On the other hand, lack of Modern Training practices is limiting employees in terms
of their personal growth and development
.
On the basis of above data, the following limitations are found in terms of quality of human
capital in Walmart-

• Employees are not much satisfied with their job and might leave the organization in
the future.
• Recruiting locally is hampering the employee creativity and out of the box thinking.
• Lack of Employee development & growth due to limited training & development
practices.
• Employee dissatisfaction due to compensation and Employee Benefits practices
followed in the company.

In Conclusion, it is found out that Walmart does not put enough investment in the Human
Resource department due to its low-cost strategy. Even though its HR practices are in-line
with company strategy it is hampering employee performance. Thus, the investment decision
is Not to Invest in Walmart in terms of Quality of Human Capital.

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 Citations

• Grant, Robert, ‘Contemporary Strategy Analysis’, Ninth Edition

• Bergdahl, M. and Vindhya, G., 2020. How The HR Division At Wal-Mart Drives The
Company's Success Through People.
• Worstall, Tim. “Walmart Is Changing Its Labor Model: How Many Workers Will
Lose Their Jobs?” Forbes, Forbes Magazine
• Panmore Institute, Thompson A. 2019. “Walmart’s Human Resource Management”
• https://businessteacher.org/reports/critical-analysis-of-amazons-approach-to-people-
management.php
• Stevenson, M. (2018, May 25). Kroger Announces new strategy in War for Talent.
Retrieved August 14, 2020, from https://www.hrexchangenetwork.com/hr-talent-
acquisition/news/kroger-announces-new-strategy-in-war-for-talent

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