Running head: CARENETWEST GENERIC BENCHMARKING
CareNetWest Generic Benchmarking
University of Phoenix
CareNetWest Generic Benchmarking
Company ? Wal-Mart
Provision of Sarbanes-Oxley
Issue Facing the Company
Wal-Mart is one of the world's largest and wealthiest retail stores. Similar to CareNetWest, however, they face corporate compliance issues of all sorts. Wal-Mart has been accused of forcing associates to work off the clock, denying associates their lunch and rest breaks, having a heath care plan that only covers some of its employees, paying associates below minimum wage, poor treatment of factory workers, having an anti-union policy, violating child labor laws, and discrimination against women, gays, bisexuals and transgender individuals. Overall, Wal-Mart has faced a horrible reputation as a business because of the vast amount of its associates who are unsatisfied. Without the proper internal expertise or support groups and management teams on board, the company's reputation seemingly grew worse because it appeared not to have any way to mitigate its issues.
Issue Response
Wal-Mart made drastic changes in order to address the legal issues it was facing. In 2004, it established a corporate compliance team to address U.S. wage and hour laws and lawsuits. Wal-Mart also created an Office of Diversity to implement programs concerning diversity and put an end to discrimination accusations. It adopted a new job classification system to consider pay and promotions. This would hopefully, curb questions about gender discrimination.
The corporate compliance team is assigned to handle the company's obligations and duties to employees such as pay, working hours and break time. New cash registers were installed, w ...