Introduction
Walmart is by far the largest grocery business in America, covering any kind of merchandise and covering a huge amount of real estate. This large company has reached the level of a multinational corporation with stores and hypermarkets all over the world. Walmart’s organization system has a combined 2 million employees in nearly thirty countries. This scale defines a special system of relations within the company and requires a clear regulation of collaborative initiatives and financial handling.
Decision-Making Rights
Walmart combines functional diversification and, at the same time, a strict pyramidal hierarchy within each segment. The organizational structure of Walmart is called a matrix; that is, it has a special network hierarchy. A strict yet flexible system is required to control all branches of such large corporations and allow them to develop. At the top level, the corporation has four divisions: Reality, International, Specialty Stores, and Sam’s Clubs (Ashby & De Leon, 2019). Each type of store is tailored to the client’s specific needs and, depending on them, changes the policy without coordinating with the other three.
The company’s organizational system is decentralized in terms of segmentation according to customers’ needs but still obeys a hierarchy and is centralized within segments. In addition, the company’s creative director can always influence the concept of the company’s development as a whole, which speaks in the direction of its ultimate centralization. This gives the system additional mobility, allowing it to quickly adapt to the needs of the client, which is an absolute plus. The downside is the dissolution of a single store identity and overly strict specialization of employees who may not be able to work with other branches of the company if necessary.
Rewarding
This corporation has an established tendency to encourage employees with cash bonuses. The system of awards showed itself back in 2019 when financial bonuses were introduced for the absence of passes for employees with hourly wages (Walmart, 2019). Such a system shows itself to be extremely motivating for employees and, accordingly, greatly increases the efficiency of the company as a whole. A highly developed bonus system for employees is considered typical for a multinational company.
This fact especially manifested itself in the process of deploying the 2020 pandemic, when the company, in order to evaluate the efforts of employees during this period, issued a cash bonus to one and a half million employees. Each full-time Walmart employee received $300, and each part-time worker half that, for a total cost of nearly $400 million (Pratt, 2020). Thus, the organization seeks to prove how much it appreciates employees and their efforts and also emphasizes its mission – to make the lives of millions of Americans easier.
Performance Evaluation
Group performance within the company is evaluated in accordance with the given segments of the field of activity. Within each of the areas, there are their own performance criteria that are equalized on a 10-point scale. So service workers are evaluated by the total response of customers, and the sales team is evaluated by efficiency expressed in the number of sales. Group performance allows you to identify more general trends in the development of the company and more effectively identify weaknesses (Jiang, 2020). However, this does not eliminate the need for individual monitoring of employees, even in such a large company.
Performance evaluation of employees at Walmart is an accompanying process throughout the entire career of employees. Employees are evaluated even before they are hired in the form of a special test when hiring. Special assessment tests exist for retailers, cleaning services, managers, and human resources specialists. This differentiation, despite the fact that it affects the content, contains the same task to determine the most promising employees for the future of the company.
A common element of each test is the development of hypothetical conditional situations that need to be addressed within the workflow framework. The ability to solve problems independently and in coordination with employees and customers is extremely valuable. Subsequently, all active employees are evaluated annually, and, depending on the results, an allowance is made. Attendance and diligence at the workplace are assessed by supervisors who track the lateness of employees, recalculating them according to a special point system. An employee who has successfully passed the test and proved his effectiveness receives a 2% salary increase (Thomas, 2022). It should also be added that supervisors evaluate the work of a newly-minted employee only three months after they take up the job, which symbolizes the end of the probationary period.
Now it is necessary to describe the controlling forces within the company with individual rights of choice. The principle of low prices underlying the Cost Center solutions ensures a constant influx of customers and guarantees the strength of the company’s success. The Cost System uses the principle of Everyday Low Cost, which is based on saving money by the company, but in order to allow customers to save. Due to the saved resources, revenue and profit centers can pay large bonuses to employees, in turn evaluating their effectiveness. The power of the Investment Centers is noticeable from the fact that the corporation continues to expand, covering more and more countries, which indicates its attractiveness to investors.
Conclusion
Thus, this company demonstrates itself as having found an effective way to organize and motivate employees. The company’s organizational architecture is hierarchical and decentralized, which provides advantages in mobility and management. Financial flows and the growth of the corporation do not allow doubting the success of the applied strategy.
References
Ashby, L., & De Leon, C. (2019). Increasing access to food: A comprehensive report on food supply options. VCU Scholars Compass.
Jiang, Y. (2020). Motivation at work and organizational culture case study of Walmart. International Journal of Education and Technology 3(1), 159-170.
Pratt, L. (2020). Walmart to reward 1.5 million employees with recognition bonus. Employee Benefits.
Thomas, M. (2022). Walmart evaluation. Query Sprout.
Walmart. (2019). Walmart introduces increased rewards and protected PTO for associates nationwide.