Human Resources and Organizational Effectiveness slp 5 - Essay Example

About the Organisation: Wal – Mart is the largest retailer in America. The company has generated a cash flow of 5.4 billion in the fiscal year 2008 (Wal Mart – Annual Report, 2008). The company was started way back in 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas. The main aim of the company is to help people save money to help live better. The growth of the company over the years has been immense.Current Strategy:The company’s signature for almost five decades has been ‘Everyday low prices’. This is also top a great extent the major strategy of the company.

Wal Mart has very strategically used its marketing capabilities to ensure the company is able to meet up to the competition. The company has created different plans and strategies like the Every Day Low Prices, which is a pricing strategy to enable customers to buy goods of great quality at low prices. The company’s basic values of respect for individuals, service to customers and striving for excellence speaks for itself. Wal – Mart has tried to ensure it reaches out to the majority of the American population and the major customer group accounting to almost 23 percent belong to families where the annual income is lesser than $25,000.

It was also noted that almost half of the customers of the superstore are blue-collar workers and most of the families are either unemployed or elderly (Featherstone, 2005). HR Program For Wal-Mart and a Metric:The main need of Wal-Mart is for a HR program which will help itself to improve and work towards the goals. The company needs a HR program to ensure complete retention of employees as the training involved and the experience required for the job is high. It is important to understand that the company’s strategy is to provide low cost goods and in turn gain a high share of the market.

The company aims at working on the basis of economies of scale. Wal-Mart requires using a few techniques as benchmarking metrics. These include the use of Recruitment cost per employee, workforce capabilities and potential customers. For the success of the human resources of the company, it is essential that the company has a clear view on these details. Also these metrics will provide a base for the company to rightly forecast the needs of the employees as well as the company’s needs to get better and more experienced people.

Metric and the Organizational Strategy:Since the company’s aim is to provide low cost goods to the customers daily, it is essential that the company has strong and well balanced operational costs. Hence this metric will help provide Wal-Mart with a strong ability to keep a constant check on the expenses and will also allow the company to ensure that the employee turnover is reduced to a great extent. This bench mark can also be applied within the current Human resources strategy as these metrics will act as a additional aspect to improvise on the current working and functioning of the organization.

ReferencesFeatherstone, L., 2005, ‘Wal-Marts women -- employees and customers -- in unhealthy relationship’, 2 January 2005, Retrieved from http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/205768_focus02.html, Accessed on 23 June 2009Wal Mart – Annual Report, 2008, ‘Another Record setting Year’, Retrieved from http://walmartstores.com/Investors/7666.aspx, Accessed on 23 June 2009