reading Response on walmart's case study
Post 1
I adopted the 3-step problem-solving approach to analyze the Walmart’s case.
First problem, Workplace Abuses has severely devastated workers benefits and wellness. The strict requirement in attendance regardless of employees’ health status can cause trauma in both physical and mental levels. Under the hood of this fact, I believe 1. the constant short of staff and 2. high worker turn-over rate are the two main reasons for Walmart’s pressure on employees’ show-up. While the facts are, on the way chasing higher attendance and longer tenure unconditionally will only further harm workers’ satisfaction at work and eventually lead to even less effectiveness in management (Kinicki, 2022). Correspondingly my suggestions are: 1. Hire more par-ttime workers and offer peak time shifts to make their schedules more flexible. 2. Enhance PTO or other benefits for employers of longer tenure.
Problem 2, Alleged Bait and Switch is a typical business trick in cost control. What caused this problem is that Walmart tried to picture a good corp reputation, but this happened under a tight financial budget. The distortion and hiding of fact definitely annoys the public and hurt employees’ benefit. In my point of view, it is not impossible to raise the minimum wage by 1 dollar without closing 63 stores. Instead of creating unemployment, walmart should consider decreasing the cash income of its senior management group, maybe swap base salary with more stock shares or benefits, the saved cashflow can be really helpful to it’s financial status. Another suggestion is to not totally shut down stores, keep them and shrink Sam’s service area through better space and inventory management, sublease some areas to other small businesses (e.g. Starbucks, Subway) so that Walmart can obtain a better cost control (Gupta, 2009).
The last problem, Poor Job Satisfaction Impacts Customer Service, is such a consequence of the first problem. How can Walmart expect its employees to be wholehearted at service work given such poor job benefits? As I have offered recommendation addressing poor job satisfactions, I’ll rather cover the cutomer service part in this part. One solution I could think of to avoid Walmart from getting even lower service rating, is to reduce customers’ expectations totally. Probably try to rebrand Walmart as a less-service-required place that offers customer more convenience and virtual assistant in shopping (Mukerjee et al., 2018).
References:
Gupta, K. R. (2009). Cost management : measuring, monitoring & motivating performance. Global India Pub.
Kinicki, A. (2021). Organizational behavior: a practical, problem-solving approach (3rd ed.). Mcgraw-Hill Education.
Mukerjee, H. S., Deshmukh, G. K., & Prasad, U. D. (2018). Technology Readiness and Likelihood to Use Self-Checkout Services Using Smartphone in Retail Grocery Stores: Empirical Evidences from Hyderabad, India. Business Perspectives and Research, 7(1), 1–15.
Post 2:
After reading the Walmart case study, I discovered a few problems which are faced by the organization. Workplace abuse faced by the employees and lower compensation paid compared to the higher ups in the company leading to unsatisfied employees. Also, there is poor customer satisfaction as Walmart, being a huge consumer-cyclical organization, needs front runner employees to be servicing efficiently, are in turn unable to do so because of being dissatisfied or lacking motivation.
As per Fobes, whether you are working as part of a sales team, providing customer service, or managing a branch of a major corporation, every professional needs motivation to do their best work.(1)
According to me Walmart should motivate its employees to come to work, and the first step is to give them basic job satisfaction by providing adequate medical facilities and bridge the gap in salaries between the top management and the employees working at minimum wage as they are the front runners of the company. Walmart can start by at least compensating its employees on par with its competitors. As per a CNBC article, Walmart pays a lower minimum wage compared to Amazon and Target.(2)
As per the text, counterproductive work behavior is the absence of satisfaction which may be associated with some types of undesirable behavior, such as low employee engagement and performance. In contrast to the helping nature of OCBs, counterproductive work behavior (CWB) harms other employees, the organization, and/or organizational stakeholders such as customers and shareholders. CWB has a negative relation with job satisfaction, so the organization should reduce it.(3) In this case study of Walmart, they should design jobs that promote satisfaction and root out and eliminate managers who treat others in an abusive manner. By doing this Walmart can eliminate workplace abuse- and avoid cases like Katie Orzehowski who was a cashier at Walmart in North Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, and suffered a miscarriage in 2016 and provided doctors’ notes and hospitalization records to excuse her missed shifts, but the company refused to excuse her absences. She was so worried that another absence would get her fired that she returned to work, while still in recovery. “I still had a lot of bleeding going on, and that’s embarrassing,” Orzehowski told The New York Times.(4)
Reference:
Panel®, E. (2022, January 25). 10 Ways To Keep Employees Motivated At A Large Business. Forbes.
Thomas, L. (2021, September 3). Walmart hikes hourly pay by $1 for more than 550,000 workers ahead of the holidays. CNBC.
Y. G. T. van Rossenberg, Howard J. Klein, K. Asplund, K. Bentein, et al., “The Future of Workplace Commitment: Key Questions and Directions,” European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, March 2018, 153–167.
R. Abrams, “Walmart Is Accused of Punishing Workers for Sick Days,” The New York Times, June 1, 2017,
