PM. Project Modification
Introduction
The changes that have been realized in globalization and technology have many effects on the
success of every company. This according to sources wholly depends upon the efficiencies in the
planning of the process involved in all the activities of the organizations, having a team of
motivated employees and efficient management of workers. Therefore, performance
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management is paramount to ensure that business activities are thriving, and employees are
motivated to work towards achieving corporate sustainability. Employees and all stakeholders
should work together in an effective and efficient manner to enable the company to meet its
goals.
This can be achieved by aligning of performance measurement with human resource
practices as well as the company’s strategic goals and objectives. A performance management
system needs to be harmonized with organization Human Resource activities such as training,
development, and reimbursement system for it to be efficient (Bhave & Brutus, 2011). This
paper therefore seeks to underline the various approaches that can be employed by Wal-Mart
with the aim of improving its competitive edge and efficiency over its competitors. The paper
will also establish the essence of performance management for the company and the approaches
that the company can employ in integrating an effective performance management approach into
its initiatives.
Wal-Mart Approach in Employing PM into its Operations
Wel-Mart, an American company that is situated in New York, has more than 8000
branches in the US as well as the neighboring countries. It is a retailing international
organization that deals with more than hundred million entrepreneurs each week with many
employees all over the world. Nevertheless, its competitive policy has not been associated with
its performance management systems. This also implies that its competitive plan is not linked
with the Human Resource interior functions of the staff incentive compensation policies, training
and development. In order to exploit its capability, Wel-Mart should develop its management
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strategies. It should make use of every chance that comes together with structured and proficient
performance management systems.
Sources indicate that organizational strategy should be directly tied to performance
management to help in achieving organization goals (Bhave & Brutus, S 2011). Performance
measurement is imperative in enhancing the efficiency of strategic planning. Performance
management offers vital data and controls for the human resource of Wal-Mart that enables the
company to develop and implement strategic plans. Wal-Mart uses performance measurement as
an instrument that assists to offer a sense of direction for the organization by directing on the
distribution of capital based on the performance of different retail stores in various locations
(Wal-Mart Stores, 2014). By properly allocating scarce resources appropriately in various Wal-
Mart Stores, the company utilizes the limited resources to provide optimum services to
customers and increase enterprise revenue.
The Importance of Performance Management to Wal-Mart
Performance measurement enables an organization to ascertain whether an organization
meets the requirements of its customer (Jiang et al., 2012). Performance measurement allows
Wal-Mart to assess and understand the customer’s tastes and preferences through evaluation of
sales data, customer feedback obtained through customer complaints among other performance
appraisal methods geared towards understanding the customer buying behavior. This
information plays a significant role in letting the management know if the company is
providing products that customers require (Hajmohammad et al., 2013).
Performance measurement also helps a management to identify areas that need
improvement in the organization. Measuring performance from all spheres of the organization
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such as financial performance, employee performance, customer satisfaction and benchmarking
against other organizations enables Wal-Mart to identify areas with weakness (Wolf, 2014).
And develop plans that help in improving the organization standards.
Performance measurement also plays an important role helping Wal-Mart to converse
and evaluate the progress of the company towards accomplishing its strategic objectives.
Assessment of administrative performance through balanced scorecard and evaluation of staff
by the human resource based on their job performance is necessary for Wal-Mart. In
ascertaining that the company is working towards attaining it’s the strategic plan. Having a well
prepared performance measurement plan helps in addressing the company and staff
performance issues that are essential to develop an efficient and sustainable premeditated plan
(Gruman & Saks, 2011).
Linking Performance Management with Human Resource Activities
Employees play an important role in ensuring that an organization achieves its strategic
goals. Therefore, a well-motivated staff improves job performance enabling an organization to
achieve the company’s goals and objectives resulting to corporate sustainability. Performance
management is interconnected with human resource activities in various ways. Performance
Management provides critical information for the Human resource to enable the department to
plan activities such as the development of training systems, workforce planning, make
recruitment and hiring decision as well as developing compensation and motivation schemes
(Kehoe & Wright, 2013).
Performance management helps an organization to identify each and every employee
strength and weakness. The Human resource department uses such information to develop
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efficient training programs to help improve employee skills and performance level. Human
Resource of multinational companies such as Wal-Mart develops regular training schemes.
These plans are tailored towards improving the employee’s knowledge base to help developing
their skills and steer the organization towards achieving corporate goals.
Performance management is paramount for feeding the human resource department
with important data for developing an efficient allocation plan for the workforce. It is the
responsibility of the human resource department of Wal-Mart to allocate duties and
responsibilities for all the employees. Data obtained from performance measurements such as
performance review enable the human resource to make an important decision to allocate the
employees where they are best suited to work.
Performance management provides critical performance appraisal data that enable
human resource managers to develop effective compensation and motivation schemes. By and
large, the goal of performance management is to achieve a fully engaged, productive and well-
motivated workforce. Therefore, Performance management enables Wal-Mart Human Recourse
managers to set performance expectation and evaluate the employees based on performance
standards, organization goals. Wal-Mart can adopt competency models as a way of evaluating
employee performance by articulating employee characteristics, skills, knowledge and other
abilities that are imperative in helping the company attain its long-term strategic goals.
Thus, enable the organization to develop an efficient reward system that rewards
employee performance rather than the outcome of employee actions. Human resource managers
offer reward and recognition for good performance as a way of motivating employees to meet
their targets and surpass them. The human resource requires developing fair and equitable
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reward systems based on the formal record of outstanding performance obtained through
effective performance measurement systems.
In other organizations, some unmotivated and lazy employees receive performance
quantity with a lot of doubts.. Such employees view performance management as an instrument
used to divide and judge their performance negatively. On the contrary, some managers feel
that performance management in a way brings division among the employees.
The relationship between performance management and strategic planning
The vision, the mission, and corporate values of Wal-Mart should be aligned with the
organization strategic plan. On the same note, the performance management system should be
developed and modeled in a way to reflect the corporate values of Wal-Mart. Strategic
forecasting is basically a regimented effort geared to fabricate fundamental actions based on
sound decisions that assists to provide direction to the organization. Consequently, performance
measurement plays the significant role of improving individual performance to facilitate the
overall perfection of staff. This propensity harmonizes strategic planning efforts to amplify the
overall company efficacy.
Performance Management System in Wal-Mart is linked with strategic plans of the
company to check that the organization’s strategic plan is adhered to at all levels of the
organization (Wal-Mart Stores, 2014). Wal-Mart evaluates the managerial performance of the
company’s branch managers through balanced scorecard and assesses all its employees based
on their job performance. So as to ascertain if all the stakeholders of the company at all levels
are working towards satisfying the customers in providing high-quality products and services
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all the time. Therefore, enable Wal-Mart to achieve organization strategic goals and business
sustainability.
Performance management plays a central role in transforming policies into realistic
plans. At Wal-Mart, directors build up overarching measurement scales to assist in tracking
business activities through performance measurements (Hahn & Kuhn, 2012). Such
measurement balances transform to the overall goals of the organization. Each department
centers on particular performance measurement attribute to assist enhance departmental
performance. For example, the marketing team at Wal-Mart is concerned more with sales
made, suitable leads and translation rates at the section. The operation staff centers on assessing
performance about delivery time, quality fulfillment and number of orders filled. On the other
hand, the customer care department, measure performance based on customer satisfaction and
feedback. These different performance measurement scales assist the organization in attaining
the overall strategic goals by translating strategy into action.
Conclusion
Wel-Mart in its approach to achieving the requirements of performance management
needs to blend the proponents of its employee’s goals and the components of performance
management. The application of this method requires that the objectives and purposes of this
company are designed in a manner that enhances the decision-making process for the
development of employee relation.
This can be achieved through the use of the feedbacks gained from the PMS performed
during transfers, promotions, pay increments and reductions and even terminations. Out of this, it
is essential to determine that the performance management system needs to be harmonized with
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organization Human Resource activities such as training, development, and reimbursement
system for it to be efficient. This apparently means that employees and all stakeholders should
work together in an effective and efficient fashion to enable the company to meet its goals.
References
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