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Walmart Organization Technology Plan

Wal-Mart’s Assessment and Training Plan
Sam Walton founded Wal-Mart in 1962. Rogers, a small town in Arkansas, was the location of the first store. Wal-Mart is quite an amazing company. It is the largest employer in the United States other than the U.S. Government. (fundinguniverse.com, 2008) Wal-Mart is the largest retailer in the world. Wal-Mart sells many different products. These include; toiletries, clothing, toys, electronics, furniture, house wares, and many other items. Many Wal-Mart locations now have an auto repair facility and a pharmacy. Many challenges for business arise when more variables are come in to play. The larger the operation, the more variables there are. A Wal-Mart location can be compared to a small city. The store manager is the mayor, the supervisors are the councilmen and women, and the employees are the townspeople. Exploration of how the chain of command works at the store level will allow one to understand where improvements must be made.
The training process for a new employee is rather time consuming. The new employee must work with the assistance of a veteran employee for two weeks before the individual is on his or her own. This method is an excellent tool that insures new employee competence. The downside to this training method is the nature of the beast. Wal-Mart’s high turnover rate makes this method very expensive. The average location must train 50 new employees every quarter. This accounts for over 32,000 training hours per year per location. This number is unacceptable.
Upper management has been working to find a solution to the training issue for the past two years. The team assigned to the challenge consists of four members of the human resource team; Joe Ailshie, Sam Cohen, John Doll, Dana Sackman. On October 10, 2008 a solution was finalized. A new computer based training program will be implemented in various test stores throughout the United States. The team expects this new program to...