Walmart’s HRM: Recruitment, Selection, Employee Retention
Walmart’s human resource management uses recruitment, selection and retention approaches to optimize HR capacity.
Walmart’s human resource management addresses recruitment needs using different recruitment sources and methods suited to different positions in the organization. The company also uses retail industry-specific criteria in its selection process. To optimize employee retention, Walmart’s human resource management strategy includes a continually evolving compensation program, together with employee-relations management and career development. The firm’s HR managers also use other approaches to improve morale and motivation in the workforce. Through this combination of approaches and strategies to address business needs in recruitment, selection and retention, Walmart’s human resource management effectively maintains adequate human resources to support the firm current retail operations and planned future global expansion.
Walmart Recruitment Practices
Recruitment Sources. Walmart’s human resource management uses internal and external recruitment sources for various positions. The use of internal recruitment sources focuses on current employees to fill open or new positions at Walmart. External recruitment sources have the benefit of accessing the labour market to address the human resource management objectives of the firm. This combination helps ensure that Walmart is flexible enough in satisfying its HR needs.
Walmart’s uses different types of internal recruitment sources. The following are the most significant in the company:
- Current employees
- Trainees
- Transfers
Current employees are a recruitment source especially for supervisory and managerial positions. For example, Walmart’s human resource management supports the promotion of hourly sales employees to managerial positions. About 70% of the company’s managers started as hourly sales employees and were promoted to their current positions. Walmart uses current employees as the biggest internal recruitment source. The company’s human resource management also uses on- the-job trainees as an internal recruitment source.
There is only a small population of trainees working for Walmart, such as in positions in sales and marketing. Occasionally, the firm absorbs trainees in the positions for which they trained. This approach has the advantage of minimizing additional human resource management spending and ensuring person-job fit. In addition, transfers are used to temporarily fill positions at Walmart, based on current short-term HR needs. In this human resource management approach to recruitment, some current employees are transferred to other positions or locations to fill gaps in the workforce. Walmart sometimes uses transfers to satisfy high HR needs during Black Friday.
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Walmart’s human resource management uses various external recruitment sources. The following are the most significant for the firm:
- Respondents to job advertisements
- Campuses
- Previous applicants
Respondents to job advertisements are the biggest external recruitment source used at Walmart. The company’s website is the main human resource management portal for this recruitment source. Job openings are regularly posted on Walmart’s corporate website for interested applicants. This recruitment source has the benefit of minimizing costs in reaching applicants.
In addition, the firm’s human resource management has recently emphasized campuses as a significant external recruitment source. In particular, American Public University (APU) entered an agreement with Walmart to give academic credits to the company’s employees, based on duration of employment and performance reviews. This strategy promotes APU, while also improving Walmart’s human resource management ability to reach out to APU students interested in working at the company. Thus, this external recruitment source increases the firm’s reach into the labor market. Previous applicants are a less significant external recruitment source used at Walmart.
The company’s human resource management objective in using this source is to maximize cost-effectiveness of recruitment. Many of these previous applicants were already evaluated but were not hired or did not pursue employment at Walmart. Thus, in using previous applicants as an external recruitment source, the company does not need to perform another extensive evaluation of these workers, thereby helping to maximize the cost-effectiveness of human resource management.
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Recruitment Methods. Based on the recruitment sources used at Walmart, the corresponding recruitment methods are direct and indirect. In using direct methods, the company directly contacts prospective employees. For example, Walmart occasionally recruits at/through campuses. The firm’s human resource management contacts students who might be interested to apply for job openings. The benefit of this method is that it allows Walmart to speed up the recruitment process instead of waiting for applicants. The method also enables the company to apply certain criteria in selecting students to contact. For example, representatives of Walmart’s human resource management can contact students in business-related degree programs for supervisory or managerial job openings. However, the direct method of recruitment is disadvantageous because it limits the population of potential recruits.
In using indirect methods of recruitment, Walmart’s human resource management objective is to reach out to a larger population of workers. These methods include advertisements on the company’s website and on other media. Indirect methods of recruitment provide the majority of Walmart’s human resources. These advertisements have a global reach, thereby providing large-scale support for the company’s HR needs. Also, indirect methods can be cost-effective. In using its corporate website for the job advertisements, Walmart minimizes human resource management costs in the aspect of recruitment.