Walmart is one of the biggest retailers worldwide, its employees have to deal with millions of customers daily, which can be very tedious and stressful. In an article by CNBC, Walmart decided to increase the minimum hourly wage of 550,000 employees by $1 as a method of motivation (Lauren, 2021). Walmart has been experiencing a tight labor market, and the organization was anticipating an increase in clients shopping in their stores (Lauren, 2021). According to the article, before this directive, the organization sought to hire 20,000 more employees to serve the increasing numbers of clients effectively (Lauren, 2021). This paper will look at the problem Walmart faces the need to increase costs in a tight labor market and potential ways to solve it.
In this context, Walmart employees experienced space issues because the organization sought to hire more employees. A perfect spatial environment in the workplace is important in building good working relationships, sharing ideas, and improving communication in the workplace. Space issues in the organization could result in employee tension. In this case, the anticipation of more clients in the summer holidays and fewer employees in Walmart stores increased employee tension. This is because the employees thought there would be excessive work without an increase in their hourly wages. This would lower employees’ productivity and eventually cause losses for the organization.
Walmart’s management can use the various organizational control methods to salvage the situation they are facing. The five ways of control can manifest themselves to varying degrees in this problem. In the case of such a large number of employees in different departments, personal control can only occur as a situational one. This type can only help to ensure the accountability of employees who have increased the minimum wage per hour, but at the same time requires the creation of new jobs, which, combined with Walmart’s plans to hire another 20,000 employees for the supply chain, can only exacerbate the problem and costs (Lauren, 2021). Bureaucratic control may determine the organizational structure, but within the framework of the designated issue is unlikely to increase the company’s efficiency. Output control must be associated with the right goal-setting policy: completed tasks can be used as a benchmark to increase the productivity and efficiency of employees to achieve better results. Incentives control, in this case, can become a fundamental solution to the problem by calculating and creating a system of incentives that, at increased costs, will significantly increase the company’s revenues through the involvement and interest of employees (Baran & Sypniewska, 2020). Finally, based on the successful implementation of this type, a transition to cultural control is possible due to the integration of this motivation into the value spectrum of the company.
Communication is becoming a vital tool for management to work with employees and within the team since the incentive system should primarily reflect the interests of the company in order to create a competitive and developing environment. Walmart can show that it is not just following the law to raise the minimum wage but also giving new and old employees a chance to prove themselves. Innovation policy always sees any change as an opportunity first, often leading to practical solutions (Arif & Akram, 2018). Such positioning can become the basis for creating cultural control and promoting effective and non-confrontational communication.
In the case of Walmart, the concepts of time, space, and employee tension played an important role. A high flow of customers is expected, and quality service requires the appropriate organization of the workspace and the clarity of the time frame for each business operation. If Walmart conducts control, then, in turn, the company must provide employees with all the necessary instructions to avoid stressful situations. The cultural foundation will promote engagement, and financial incentives will promote employee satisfaction, which are determinants of organizational success (Meng & Berger, 2019). Therefore, the company will need to apply an integrated approach that considers all of these categories to achieve a solution to the problem and turn a high-cost situation into a win-win situation with vast development potential.
References
Arif, S., & Akram, A. (2018). Transformational leadership and organizational performance: the mediating role of organizational innovation. SEISENSE Journal of Management, 1(3), 59-75.
Baran, M., & Sypniewska, B. (2020). The impact of management methods on employee engagement. Sustainability, 12(1), 426.
Lauren, T. (2021). Walmart hikes hourly pay by $1 for more than 550,000 workers ahead of the holidays. CNBC.
Meng, J., & Berger, B. K. (2019). The impact of organizational culture and leadership performance on PR professionals’ job satisfaction: Testing the joint mediating effects of engagement and trust.Public Relations Review, 45(1), 64-75.