Walmart Communications Audit: Channels, Media & Strategy

Introduction to Walmart and the Audit

Walmart is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas. The company was founded in 1962 with the aim of providing discount goods to customers to enable them to live better. It went public in October 1969 to facilitate the achievement of this vision. Today, the company operates over 11,000 stores in 27 countries, dealing in a wide range of merchandise including foodstuffs, groceries, clothing, furniture, apparel, toys, and electronics. It is home to over 2.2 million employees across the world and is regarded as one of the world's most valuable companies.

Walmart is also the world's largest retailer and the world's largest company by revenues. This report reviews Walmart's communication processes, examining the specific channels and media that the company uses to communicate with its stakeholders. The insights provided here were collected through a communications audit involving participants from the company's main stakeholder groups.

Objective of the Communications Audit

The author worked as an associate at Walmart's store in West Hills, California for one year prior to this audit. During that period, familiarity was gained with the organization's leadership, business processes, goals, and operational strategies. Besides providing everyday low prices to customers, Walmart commits itself to maintaining a climate of positive communication with its stakeholders (Walmart Inc., 2015). In recent years, however, a rift has developed between the company's leadership and various stakeholder groups, particularly shareholders and employees. A previously conducted audit into the company's operations revealed that ineffective communication systems were partly to blame for this growing rift. Based on these revelations, the branch manager's permission was sought to conduct a communications audit to determine the effect of these issues on the West Hills branch.

The overriding goal of the audit was to seek facts and perceptions about the organization's communications strategy from customers and employees, and to propose recommendations that could ensure improved public relations management, greater stakeholder involvement, and enhanced two-way communication between the company and its internal and external stakeholders (Downs & Adrian, 2012). This report presents the findings of that audit; the recommendations are still being drafted and will appear in the final report to be submitted to the branch manager.

Nature and Scope of the Audit

Walmart has a large number of stakeholder groups including customers, shareholders, employees, suppliers, lenders, the community, the government, and others. Owing to cost limitations, it was not possible to include representatives from all of these stakeholder groups in the audit. As a result, the audit was limited to two stakeholder groups — employees and external customers — and was confined to the company's West Hills branch. The overriding assumption was that the strategies and methodologies used in communication are similar across all of the company's branches.

Audit information was collected in two fundamental steps. First, consultant samples from the company's communication policies, news clippings, booklets, and newsletters were reviewed to determine the various strategies, media, and technologies used in internal and external communication. Subsequently, the auditor conducted in-depth interviews with 75 participants: 50 employees and 25 external customers. Two one-hour focus group meetings were held with the participating employees in the storeroom after closing time on two different Sunday evenings (Sunday was selected because the store closes early). Focus group 1 consisted of employees between the ages of 20 and 35, while focus group 2 consisted of those aged 36 and above. The auditor determined that the two groups would likely hold different views regarding their preferred communication channels and media.

No focus groups were held to obtain views from participating customers; instead, the auditor established a designated spot near the store's exit. Customers willing to share their views could do so voluntarily after being notified by staff inside the store.

The table below presents the demographics of the participating employees.

Table 1: Demographics of Participating Employees

Age: 20–25: 28 employees; 26–35: 15 employees; 36–45: 6 employees; Over 45: 1 employee; Total: 50.

Sex: Male: 28; Female: 22; Total: 50.

Department: Administration: 2; Sales: 15; Finance: 25; Procurement: 8; Total: 50.

Duration of Service at Walmart: 3–5 years: 35; 5–10 years: 9; 11–15 years: 5; Over 15 years: 1; Total: 50.

Participation in the audit was voluntary. However, to be eligible to participate, an employee needed to have served at Walmart for a minimum of three years. This requirement ensured that participants were well-acquainted with the organization's processes and communication strategy.

Communication Channels Used at Walmart

Communication channels were defined as the means through which people communicate or pass information to others (Newsom, Turk & Kruckeberg, 2012). The following five communication channels were identified: electronic communication, mobile communication, written communication, broadcast media, and face-to-face communication (Newsom et al., 2012).

Focus group 1 was composed of employees between the ages of 20 and 35. This group identified electronic and written communication channels as the channels most commonly used by the organization to pass information to them. Written communication was identified as the most commonly used channel, although participants indicated that they personally preferred the electronic channel. One participant indicated that written communication was "old-school" and that electronic communication was the way to go. Employees cited speed and convenience as the primary reasons for preferring electronic communication over written communication. One employee noted that they would be more comfortable reading an email or browsing the company's website than stopping in a corridor to read a poster. This employee suggested that the organization develop a culture of communicating information through both means, allowing individuals to subscribe to whichever they found more comfortable.

Mobile communication was identified as the third most commonly used channel of communication within the organization. Apps such as WalmartOne were used to communicate new initiatives in-house and were appreciated by employees for providing real-time access to company news and updates.

Broadcast media and face-to-face communication were used to communicate with employees only very rarely. Face-to-face communication ranked lowest, with a significant number of employees indicating that they had not seen their supervisors in the past month. One participant mentioned that she did not consider face-to-face communication an effective channel because, even when employees attend meetings, they have no voice in decision-making. According to this participant, face-to-face communication would work better if employees were given a genuine opportunity to participate and the power to influence outcomes.

Like their counterparts in focus group 1, this group of employees identified written communication as the most commonly used channel for top-down communication within the organization. Posters were identified as the most common form of written communication. Unlike focus group 1, however, this group showed a preference for written and face-to-face communication. One participant noted that they had not checked their email in years and did not know how to navigate the various sections of the company's website to find new information. Electronic and mobile communication were not among the preferred channels for this group; participants suggested that the organization develop a culture of organizing meetings or conferences to convey important messages to employees. According to participants in this group, the organization's reduced use of face-to-face communication is causing it to lose touch with its employees.

Customers identified broadcast media, electronic sources, and written communication as the channels they relied on most to obtain information about new offers and initiatives at the company. A majority of respondents reported relying primarily on the company's website for new information. Older respondents, however, mentioned that they mostly relied on word-of-mouth referrals from friends and family, television, radio, and print journals and magazines. The Wall Street Journal and Walmart newsletters were identified as the most common forms of written communication used by the organization to reach the public.

Conclusion

Walmart is the world's largest corporation by revenues. The preceding sections present a picture of the organization's communications strategy and the specific elements that ought to be changed to make that strategy more effective. As demonstrated, the company relies on a variety of media to communicate with its customers and associates. These include the corporate website, the staff portal, the Walmart.com email, meetings and conferences, social media networks, and mobile apps.

What emerges clearly from the audit, however, is that the company ought to revise its communications strategy to better reflect the preferences of its customers and employees. Younger employees have been shown to prefer electronic forms of communication, whereas older employees prefer written and face-to-face communication. Care should be taken to balance the communication needs and preferences of different employee groups so that the chosen communications strategy benefits all parties equally. Full recommendations will be presented in the final report submitted to the branch manager.

References

Chandler, D. & Munday, R. (2013). A Dictionary of Media and Communication. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press.

Downs, C. W. & Adrian, A. D. (2012). Assessing Organizational Communication: Strategic Communications Audit. New York, NY: Guilford Publications.

Gray, D. (2012). The Connected Company. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media Inc.

Newsom, D., Turk, J. & Kruckeberg, D. (2012). This is PR: The Realities of Public Relations (11th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

Yuan, Y. C., Zhao, X., Liao, Q. & Chi, C. (2013). The use of different information and communication technologies to support knowledge-sharing in organizations: From email to microblogging. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 64(8), 1965–1670.

Walmart Inc. (2015). Walmart corporate communications. Retrieved from https://corporate.walmart.com