Question

My focus was on Walmart - Low Wage and Employee Dissatisfaction at Walmart...........Please answer the following questions below.

• What industry is the firm you selected for the course project?Briefly describe the firm.
• What was the OB problem that you identified? (Low Wage and Employee Dissatisfaction at Walmart)
• What is your proposed solution? What OB theories (from the textbook) support your solution?
• What are the indicator that the firm should gauge to avoid this issue for repeating again?
• What have you learned from developing your course project?

Answer 1

Discussion Topic: Walmart - Low Wage and Employee Dissatisfaction at Walmart.

Answer-1

Walmart belongs to the Retail and wholesale industry.

Walmart is a Retail Multinational American company headquartered at Bentonville, Arkansas. Walmart was founded by Sam Walton in 1962 and it was incorporated in October 1969. Walmart operates Supermarkets, Discounted departmental stores, grocery stores all around the world. As per the latest data, Walmart has 11503 stores and clubs in 27+ countries. Walmart is one of the world's largest companies as per the fortune 500 lists and had revenue of USD 525 billion in 20202 and the largest private employee with 2.2 million employees all around the world. Walmart is bringing value to the customers by providing products in various categories at the lowest priced model.

Answer 2.

One of the issues Walmart employees are facing today is Low wages and dissatisfaction. Walmart is facing criticism from individuals, groups, NGOs, Labour Unions, etc for employee low wages, improper healthcare facilities, and poor working conditions. For example, Walmart pays $11 per hour as a starting wage and $13-14 as the average for full-time hourly workers.

Answer 3.

Proposed Solutions:

Walmart is one of the largest private employers in the world with over 2.2 million employees in its 11503 stores and other facilities such as eCommerce business, clubs, and supply chain. But the company's wage rate is not at all up to the mark as per the federal wage guidelines and comparison with the competitor's wage rate. Due to this policy, the company is facing so many issues from the employee side as with such a low wage rate the employee is not satisfied with its job that decrease employee's performance at work. More absenteeism, work pressure, issues with co-workers are some of the problems are facing by the company.

The worker is not able to take care of himself and it's not possible to survive with a family with this low wage. This increases low morale in the employee at work and feels that the company is not appropriate to place to work. Walmart has the policy to cut costs at every stage in the organization and this cut cost concept is aggressively used for employee wages and other benefits. Due to that so, many employees are leaving the organization and arranging strikes at so many stores in the USA.

Walmart has to think that this strategy is not for long term business as today's employee is smart enough to understand his rights and can respond properly in the near future. This is not a great policy for such a big brand when its employees are not satisfied due to the low wage rate and improper working conditions.

In such a situation, Walmart has to motivate and inspire its employees and explain the company policies clearly to the employees. If any organization wants to improve employee performance that improves its organization performance as well, the organization has to provide better pay and other benefits to its employees. It could be the best infrastructure, learning and growth opportunities with the organization, but at the end of the day, employees want better pay, good working culture, and other monetary benefits.

The primary objective of the job is to satisfy a basic need that is money. According to Maslow's need hierarchy theory, the employee wants to satisfy the phycological needs of the employee. When physiological needs are fulfilled by the employee, the employee assumes that he will get a regular income to fulfill its basic needs. Walmart has to fulfill the employee's primary needs that will make sure that the employee is getting its basic needs.

As per the Herzberg's two-factor theory in organization behaviors, hygiene factor that improves the work culture of the company, good working conditions, interpersonal relation between employees and employer, and salary should be taken care by the organization. If these factors are not available in the organization, employee dissatisfaction will increase and decreases employee performance in the organization.

It is very important that employee's phycological needs should be fulfilled and hygiene factors should be taken care of by the organization by Walmart to improve employee performance and organizational performance as well.

Answer 4.

Due to the job dissatisfaction and low salaries to the employee, Walmart is facing so many internal issues are increasing and Walmart is criticized by everyone like individual, groups, labor union, legal practitioner, etc. The result of that, Walmart announced that it will pay more to its employees with more benefits and will provide good working conditions.  Walmart announces to build 200 training centers to provide training to its hourly wage workers. According to the training performance, the workers would be getting higher pay and other benefits.This is the indicator that the company will not repeating the issue again.