The Tribe Report 5. The Non-Desk Worker Issue | Page 7

“When we get communications requests, we have to look

said, ‘You Asked, We Listened.’ Our Personnel Managers

at it and decide if it’s relevant for our associates at that

noticed right off the bat, and we received a lot of positive

time,” said Mills. “The upcoming holidays are a great

feedback from them because they knew it was added as a

example. As stores get busier, we need to understand that

result of their comments.”

our associates are spending their work hours taking care
of customers. Sometimes that means we need to say ‘no’
to the home office shifting priorities for the company or
the store.”

Although the feedback Walmart receives online
has led to some great ideas, they realize offline
face-to-face conversations are something the
company should always value.

When deciding who gets what communications
when, Walmart decided early on that there “Another way we get feedback from our associates in
would be no difference in delivery methods the field is though councils,” said Mills. “My team
based on full- or part-time employment.
manages a store manager council which consists of
high-performing leaders who represent their associates,
“Our communications are targeted to specific positions

peers and other leaders. If Walmart has a new idea they

so it doesn’t matter if an employee is full- or part-time,”

want to put into action, we reach out to these councils to

explained Mills. “If you’re in apparel, you need to know

help us better understand barriers and concerns as well

what’s important in apparel.”

as how our associates will react.”

Mills mentioned that when Sam Walton founded the

Mills summed up Walmart’s approach to
communicating with their non-desk workers
this way:

company, one of the things he taught each employee was
to listen to associates and hear what they have to say. To
stay true to this, Walmart makes an effort to keep every
communication open for two-way conversations between
employees and management.
“We put feedback loops in every communication channel
so associates can comment and share their thoughts,” said

“Our associates are the pulse of the company and we have
to stay connected to them to understand the implications
of our communications and decisions. In a nutshell,
that’s the Walmart U.S. communication team.”

Mills. “A great example of this is our ‘Leadership Weekly’
communication channel. It’s emailed out every Friday
at noon and most departments have their own sections
we call ‘Focus Points.’ This section highlights things each
department will need to know for the upcoming week.”
“The Personnel Managers at stores were reading
‘Leadership Weekly’ and noticed they didn’t have
their own section. To try and change this, they started

TAKEAWAYS

+ Rifle your communications to specific positions in
your company
+ Understand how employee workloads factor into
delivery times for communications
+ Seek employee feedback to fine-tune communications

commenting in the feedback loops. After about three or
four of their comments, we worked it out and decided
to add a section in just for them. However, before we
launched it, we sent out a teaser email saying it was
coming, and when it launched, we created a logo that ()]%9QH