High Performance Culture

Walmart’s High-Performance Culture (HPC) aims to elevate, engage, and connect. Together, we can drive business and talent by elevating expectations, engaging associates, and connecting individual and company goals to performance, rewards, and evaluations. This directly translates to giving ongoing feedback, developing goals, performing annual evaluations, and providing rewards.

Ongoing Feedback

Goals

Annual Evaluations

Reward & Motivate

Ongoing Feedback

Giving effective feedback is the quickest way to unlock our potential as a People organization. It must be frequent, transparent, and honest. When giving feedback, you must:

Problem solve: Discuss obstacles and challenges and ensure tools to succeed are provided.
Celebrate wins: Recognize positive impact, progress toward goals, and development of new skills and capabilities.
Be transparent: Provide open and honest feedback and make sure expectations are clear.
Be ready for feedback: Be receptive to feedback and take the initiative to ask for feedback.
Check goals: Be sure to check and adjust as individual and company goals evolve.

Visit this link to: Learn more about Ongoing Feedback

Goals

Great goals help us raise the bar on our performance by ensuring that associates know what is expected of them. They also help us assess our performance and differentiate rewards. When developing great goals, it’s helpful to use the following guidelines:

Have no more than six, as too many can limit focus.

Strive for aspirational goals that stretch our capabilities.

Partner with others to set goals.

Ensure goals are aligned vertically with leadership and horizontally with key stakeholders.

Include an appropriate number of tasks and measures for each goal.

Determine tasks and measures based on complexity, your job function, and the number of individual milestones within a goal.
Keep measurements objective.
Focus qualitative measurements on outcomes and impact.
Actively discuss goals with your team to align individual goals with broader company goals.

Visit this link to: Learn more about Goals

Annual Evaluations

A High-Performance Culture and annual evaluations must go hand in hand. Be sure to:

Prep for evaluations and review ratings

Have frequent conversations about performance.
Have a strong knowledge of High-Performance Culture.
Be familiar with Walmart’s evaluation system.
Collect and review feedback.
Differentiate and calibrate performance.

Have performance discussions

Help everyone understand their impact.
Discuss goals, competences/capabilities, and attitudes.
Encourage top performers, be realistic with average performers, and be transparent with low performers.
Explain the connection between goals and performance rating.

Visit this link to: Learn more about Annual Evaluations

Reward & Motivate

Rewards can be a great tool to encourage higher performance. They must be appropriate and aligned to the total rewards budget. When assessing rewards, it’s important to:

Go even deeper within each performance rating and rank into low, average, and top performance.
Consider financial impact on the business when determining total rewards.

Visit this link to: Learn more about Reward & Motivate

Discussion Guide

Purpose: Articulate practical implications of a high-performance management and evaluation system within your organization.

Directions: Take your thoughts on high-performance management and evaluation to your next team meeting. Below are suggested discussion topics:

Discussion Topics:

Reflecting on the relationship between High-Performance Culture and performance.
Considering what a High-Performance Culture would look like in your team.
Incorporating continuous feedback within a busy work environment.
Having tough conversations about performance ratings.

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