Sam Walton used to say, “If you’ll take care of your employees, your employees will take care of your customers, and your business will take care of itself”. He believed Walmart’s Associates were one of Walmart’s most important sustainable competitive advantages.
This has become the running joke of Sam's and Walmart the past 20+ years. If Mr. Sam could only see this clusterphuck of a company now.
@cba+17Qtbrvk - Not Actually. Yes Sam was tough but he did take care of his associates. There were not the mass layoffs that there are now. There were hiring freezes and that would result in lower counts of associates that happened simply by attrition and payroll was watched like a hawk.
Sam did listen to the associates however, the "Open Door Policy" was not and still should not be a "Get What You Want" policy.
It seems that the biggest difference between Sam's time and the current "Situation" is that back then if you did your job, were good at your job and were consistent with your job you could look forward to the possibility of future advancement. I'm quite positive that there were cases of rising through the ranks by who you knew vs. what you knew but that was not quite a rampant as it is today. Most of the past leaders had actually worked and/or ran stores & clubs. The majority of today's leadership have never had to pull an overnighter to work modulars or deal with a messy customer service incident 10 minutes before closing on a holiday weekend. They simply have not had to deal with customers as those on the front line have had to do. I wish that the requirement to be a leader with the company is that they had to work a minimum of 2 years in the stores/clubs - working overnights, unloading trucks, shagging carts, writing evals, running a register, working holidays....etc.- you know just dealing with all the normal issues that a retailer has vs. a 2 week stint in the stores working from 8 to 5.
Read the real history, not they hype spread by the Walmart company. He held the same views home office does today.