Employee Empowerment - Wal-Mart - Essay Example

Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart created a unique culture at Walmart by involving all the employees of Walmart, including those belonging to the managerial as well as nonmanagerial positions. Mr. Sam Walton once said that individuals do not win, but teams do. Therefore if someone is working for Walmart then Sam Walton is a partner, not the boss. Mr. Walton used the unique organizational culture to gain a long-term competitive advantage. The whole idea or concept behind the incorporation of such an organizational culture is to do things the Walmart way. Probably that is the reason people working at Walmart call it a ‘cult-like’ atmosphere. One of the key ingredients to doing business in the Walmart way is to treat employees as business partners. Mr. Walmart believes in the value of creating employee partnerships. It was believed that an employee can be a business leader if provided with the right platform. The best way to do so is to let the employees take major decisions (Wilton, 2010, p.292).


The employees at Walmart are not ‘employees’; rather they are ‘associates’ who encourage acting as entrepreneurs. To take the employee empowerment process Mr. Walton even introduced the concept of profit sharing. In Walmart there is no HR division, there exists a people division as Mr. Walton understood the importance of employee and manager interaction.

Suggestions and Recommendations
Another key aspect of Walmart's employee empowerment is controlling expenses. According to Mr. Walton, employees should manage company expenses just like personal expenses. Therefore by sharing the profit and loss, the employees truly understand the strong relationship between the profitability of the company and the potential to receive some percentage of profit sharing. That is not all. Add to the innovative concept of profit sharing Mr. Walton wanted to add something extra to motivate the employees. It was once said by him that money and ownership may not be enough to motivate people. It was believed that the employees or associates rather; need to set high. One of the key ways to do so is to encourage competition among the employees. Quite often Mr. Walton would encourage the employees to set challenges for themselves.

Workers who can meet those challenges or even get somewhere close to them would be rewarded with healthy payoffs (Martin, 1993, p. 85). Therefore, for developing employee empowerment at Walmart, the senior management of the human resource department need to develop incentive or reward-based job duties. It will encourage the employees more dedicated to their tasks and also this will result in cost-effective business operations. As the largest retail supermarket in the world, Walmart needs to highly focus on employee empowerment to maintain sustainable business operations through a self-driven workforce of the organization. Read More