Walmart Human Resources SWOT

Human Resource Management

Background

Wal-Mart is one of the largest employers in the world. It has 2.3 million employees globally, most of which are in the United States (Yahoo, 2017). The company gains its competitive advantage in a number of ways. It is able to offer low prices, and competes on that basis (Favaro, 2015). This has two major implications for the company. First, it needs to hire a lot of unskilled and low-skilled labor. Most Wal-Mart stores are constantly hiring, because this labor, especially when paid poorly, tends to turn over a lot. Second, with this sort of turnover, the company wants to find strategies to train workers quickly, and to find workers who are more likely to stay with the company. The entire recruiting process for a lot of the store employees needs to be streamlined, efficient and process-driven.

The other major implication of Wal-Mart's strategy is that in order to have the most efficient, effective systems in place, management has to be quite talented. Wal-Mart has long been a leading innovator in logistics, for example, because it recognized that area as one where there were opportunities for margin improvement that would allow it to offer lower prices than competitors. Wal-Mart needs brains not only in logistics, but in areas like marketing and web. As an example, the company has 4000 people working on its online and mobile properties, because Wal-Mart is pursuing Amazon in this space (Ellison, n.d.). Recruiting for managerial, tech, analytics and that sort of talent is entirely different, requiring Wal-Mart to basically run simultaneous functional HR teams for different spheres of its operation, in addition to the national-level teams that it uses in Mexico, Canada, and other major international markets.

SWOT Analysis

Strengths

Weaknesses

Opportunities

Threats

Excellent HR organization

Iffy reputation at for low level jobs

Global hiring

Negative press

High visibility

Lower than average pay & benefits at low level

Leverage online presence

Poaching

Good reputation at high level

Head office location

New headquarters

Employee reviews (i.e. Glassdoor)

CEO recruitment

New recruiting avenues

Minimum wage laws

Strengths

There are several strengths that Wal-Mart currently leverages, though these tend to focus on the high end positions. A good example of excellence there is that the CEO actively recruits other top executives to the company (Halzack, 2017). Having a CEO engaged in C-suite team building of this nature means that new executives are likely to have high culture fit, even if they are external hires, thereby reducing the risks associated with external executive hiring. Direct CEO involvement in hiring might seem like something HR doesn't want, but ultimately it's better for the CEO to identify candidates based on the CEO's vision for the company's direction, to ensure a good strategic fit as well as cultural.

Another strength is that the company has a good reputation for managerial roles. Wal-Mart is consistently rated as one of the most admired companies, and one of the top-ranked in its space (Fortune, 2012). This stellar reputation means that Wal-Mart has an easier time attracting talent – people know that Wal-Mart looks good on a CV; it's an affirmation that they are an innovation leader in the field who can deliver on results, since Wal-Mart has a reputation for being a results-driven organization.

Wal-Mart needs to recruit in bulk, which means that having high visibility helps. It is the world's largest retailer, has stores everywhere, and has a large online presence. Wal-Mart is known to always have openings, so it is a place that people who need work will look for. This gives Wal-Mart the opportunity, in theory at least, to skim the cream. Even hiring for unskilled entry level positions, if the company can attract better workers, they will require less training, reach full productivity faster, turn over less, and more of them will end up in the company's leadership streams. High social media engagement in particular is believed to be an influencer of both passive and active job-hunters; Wal-Mart's relative strength in this space as a consumer brand should translate over to its employer brand (Sury, 2015).

Wal-Mart in general has a strong recruiting organization, that has proven capable of delivering the talent it needs to maintain its excellence. There are challenges in an organization this size, but there is no evidence to suggest that the human resources department at Wal-Mart cannot meet these challenges.

Weaknesses

There are several areas of weakness that end up creating challenges for Wal-Mart. First, the company has an iffy reputation for low-level jobs. While its managerial and executive roles are well-regarded, lower-level jobs are not nearly held in the same esteem. That is to say, the company's employer brand ranges a fair bit, depending on what the job is. The jobs for which it has to hire in bulk, it seems to do a good job finding the people it wants, and the company openly admits that it will not…