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« Wanted: Child | Main | New issue of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology »
Wal-Mart internal HR memo has surprising recommendations
On November 1, 2005 by Jamie Madigan
After reading this article on CNN Money I keep hearing those Wal-Mart greeters saying "Welcome to Wal-Mart. Check out my MASSIVE PECTORAL MUSCLES!"
The story, if that wasn't enough to induce you to read it, is about a memo from Wal-Mart's HR department. The memo largely talks about how to hack away at benefits costs to (presumably) further increase the company's profits. One part, for example, complains about how more senior employees get paid more than new employees, despite the fact that they're no more productive.
The part that caused my eyebrows to arch, though, was this bit from the CNN Money article:
To discourage unhealthy job applicants, the paper said, Chambers suggests Wal-Mart arrange for "all jobs to include some physical activity (e.g., all cashiers do some cart-gathering),"
Yikes. That kind of thing sounds pretty likely to result in hiring fewer people with disabilities and possibly fewer older people. Could they defend that as being a core part of the job? The thing is, though, that the law (at least in the U.S., and maybe other places) requires employers to make reasonable accommodation for people with disabilities. I could see a judge looking at the "all cashiers must do cart-gathering" scenario and saying "Not doing cart-gathering would be a reasonable accommodation for people physically incapable of doing that part of the job." So maybe that's how they'd deal with that potential problem: make the physical activity the norm but make accommodations when needed.
Existing comments:
Posted by Bryan at November 3, 2005 10:04 AM:
I would be very surprised if they could show evidence that all positions required a substantial amount of physical activity (enough to be an essential function) and support a physical agility test. Of course who knows what the test would look like. I find it interesting that the focus would be on applicants and not current employees (e.g., providing incentives for joining a gym, etc.).
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