Human Resources

Human Resources

Introduction

The Walter Disney Company has over the years enjoyed a large market share in five major ways in the media industry. Divided into five divisions, The Walter Disney Company has continually strengthened its modes of operation, the core being human resource management. For instance, one of the best approaches that the company uses to get the right people for the job is through organized and clearly structured recruitment procedures. As a result, The Walter Disney Company has thrived well in the market and there is a lot of future for them in terms of market share in the industry. Holding some of these factors constant, one question remains. How do the various components of human resource do correlate and support each other? This paper will seek to show and compare how human resource components prop up each other in The Walter Disney Company and present its recommendation to the human resource manager for evaluation.

Main Body

Overview of the Company

The Walter Disney Company operates in five spheres of multi-media entertainment namely, media networks, parks and resorts, studio entertainment, consumer products and interactive media. One of the most interesting divisions that this paper will consider keenly is the park and resort division. This is a division whose main objective is to provide quality vocational holidays to clients from all over the world. Today, Disney resorts and parks have gained popularity and this has prompted the human resource manager to ensure that they get the right people to work in these parks. It has been observed that The Walter Disney Company believes that taking good care of their employees will enable them achieve their business objectives. In other words, they believe that success of their business is two ways; taking care of the employees and the company’s growth in terms of market and profit.

Their Culture

The main business culture is a three-fold thrive that determines how business is conducted. The first value that they seek to uphold is searching and acquiring talented minds. Every individual has been created with an innate knowledge of handling a situation. These talents and gifts are what they capitalize on to make sure that their customers are satisfied with the services they get in their visits to Disney parks and resorts. For instance, an individual may be talented with leadership qualities, and another may be gifted with a managerial gift. When this is combined, it forms a formidable team that can take the company into a new dimension in terms of service delivery.

The other value is creating learning and development opportunities for the employees. Training employees on how they can improve their working skills is instrumental in the service delivery. In other words, The Walter Disney Company believes in equipping its employees for the present and future. One of the submissions that this paper is making is that it is one thing to be gifted and talented in one area or another, and it is another thing to make deliberate effort to nurture, develop and sharpen the talent for effective use of it in the market place. Therefore, it can be observed that The Walter Disney Company believes in the principle of spending much time in developing its employees, and this development will become the driving force behind quality service delivery at work place.

The last core value of the company is ensuring that every employee is entitled to all the available work benefits. It has been observed that one of the most appealing factors to many employees is the amount of benefit that he or she takes home. Increased chances of earning extra coins are always welcomed by most employees and therefore act as a source of motivation for the employees to continue serving the company. It can therefore be argued that Walter Disney’s human resource came to the realization that motivating employees through the provision of all their benefits is a major tool of motivation that will make their employees happy, which will in turn guarantee quality service year in year out. The three cultures are universal and common in other companies.

Components of Human Resources

One of the components of a successful employee is the ability in which he or she is able to handle her job description and duties well. This is one of the areas in which the resort and parks department has majored on in order to ensure that each employee clearly understands the duties and description that concerns his or her department and therefore will be held accountable if activities in that department come to a standstill. It is also a major way in which human resource department is able to shield employees from colliding with other employees in line of duty. A clear job description is a major tool that the human resource manager uses to limit any chances of being given excuses for not doing what is expected of them. It also reduces the chances of duplicating duties in the process of accomplishing tasks. This is achieved through constant debriefing by the management of the employees (Pulakos, 2005).

The other component of human resource employed heavily in this company is training activities whose main conduit is seminars, forums and meetings. The decision to continually train could be informed by the need to remain relevant in the industry as a result of technological advancement. New technology has been witnessed in this sector and this means that the company must keep on updating their services in order to keep up with this technology. In an attempt to comply with technology, the company has a set of trainers whose main duty is to keep up with the recent trends in technology, learn it and introduce it to the employees and finally do evaluation on how it is being articulated in the work place. It is important to note that compliance to new technology is always expensive, but this compliance has far reaching effects on the service delivery to the customers. In other words, it is worth paying the cost of training employees on new technology, which will in turn lead to profit maximization. In such forums, the management takes time to explain, clarify, and assure their support to the employees in their line of duty.

In addition, employee turn out is always inevitable and once in a while, an employee may want to transfer from one company to another. This vacancy will automatically require to be filled through promotion or hiring a new employee.  It will therefore be important for the employee to be literally oriented to the new job position and this will guarantee continuity of production in the affected department. It is through such trainings that the employees understand who The Walt Disney Company is and therefore will make it easy for them to cope and adapt to their new jobs. In other words, training will be a major boost to employee’s confidence that they have what it takes to handle tasks and assignments in the workplace (Pulakos, 2005).

Another component that is closely related to the training activity is recruitment activities. It has been observed that The Walt Disney Company’s recruiting team is tasked with the responsibility of getting the right people for the job. For them to achieve this company objective, they must consider several factors which helps them to know the right person to be recruited for any job in the company. For instance, the team’s fist consideration is the individual’s professional qualification which becomes the core for candidacy. This is easy, since the team only requires the curriculum vitae which clearly show the candidate’s performance in the learning institutions. In addition to professional qualities, the team is also interested in co-curricular activities which portray the kind of an individual the candidate is. It is through involved in extra-curricular activities that the team receives an insight about the talents and gifts being manifested and how well they have been utilized.

Recruitment activities are very vital towards the running of the company because they ensure continuity and sustenance in the company. As submitted earlier, filling of vacancies left open by employee turnout is the only way out for the management to ensure that production is not affected. The recruitment team may wake up to the need of creating a new position in the workplace in an attempt to ensure that the company’s vision and mission is realized. This paper submits that the recruitment activities and selection approaches used have a delve correlation. It can be argued, therefore, that selection approaches has its own set of considerations that the team makes. Some of these considerations have been considered as mere myths that tend to prove the suitability of a candidate in the selection process. For instance, taking deep consideration into an individual’s consciousness and personal values or integrity is always presumed to yield high results in accomplishing tasks (Pulakos, 2005).

While it is difficult to tell the truth in it, these elements are deeply considered in selecting the right person for the job in this company. It can be posited that the recruiting team at The Walt Disney Company is very concerned with other qualities that may be hidden in a candidate, explained by the open ended questions that are raised in the interview room which seeks to get more information that can never be expressed in writing. Eloquence in speech and accurate response to questions are good examples that the team is interested in. In other words, selection approaches for the team matters a lot, and it is used to diversify service delivery in each employee’s area of gifting.

Another component of human resource in the company is performance appraisal systems. These are means and measures that a company puts in place that paves way for the evaluation of the employee in service delivery. Since the company has been doing their best to provide training and equipping its employees for excellent work ethics, it reserves the right of performance appraisals. The main purpose for this exercise is to provide the employees with the information that contains all their accomplishments, challenges and action plans that should be taken to enhance quality service delivery to the customers. Performance appraisal is one of the channels that an employee will either be proud of, or would prompt him or her to make a resolution to do better in a given period of time. Through performance appraisals, employees are able to evaluate themselves and thus will advance their self esteem as well as excellence in handling tasks (Pulakos, 2005).

The implementation of promotion systems implemented by the company’s resource management is the other component of human resource that is heavily employed and is a great motivator for employees. This is mainly done through rewarding. It is observed that the resort and parks division of The Walt Disney Company has over 40 rewards that are available for the employees and this is done as a means of motivating and promoting the employees’ welfare. These tokens have raged and it is observed that one of the most coveted awards is referred to as Partners in Excellence, whereby employees recommend an employee who is presumed to show excellence in service delivery. In addition to being appointed, the selected employees are said to be announced in an organized ceremony and this becomes a platform for advocating and promoting healthy competition among the employees in matters of quality service delivery.

Another interesting component of human resource that the company uses is the use of pay parts, and other benefits that an employee is entitled to. In the recent past, the American economy has been very harsh and this has caused the cost of living to balloon at a very high rate. Affordable health care and other allowances play a major role in the life of an individual. Upon this realization, the resort and parks division has been considering its employees in a special manner by providing them with healthcare cover and this motivates them to work even the more. This is a way of building trust among the employees that the company is also concerned with their various needs. Lastly, the company’s admittance that trade unions are important to their employees is in itself a big plus for them. This is a platform that employees use to build each other in terms of moral support as well as financial connected needs. This is a good approach towards boosting the social life of every employee, which will in turn make them happy and satisfied in the course accomplishing tasks (Pulakos, 2005).

Conclusion

This paper submits that the entire components discussed above directly relate to each other and they are the driving force behind the success of the resort and parks division of The Walter Disney Company. It can be observed that each of the components discussed above is a building block to the other and hence no one can stand alone. In fact, most of them serve one solitary purpose: excellent human resource management that will achieve the vision and mission of the company. However, two recommendations can be made. First, it is important to consider giving the employees a chance to be shareholders of the company, which has not yet happened. This will create a sense of belonging and therefore they will be careful to work extra harder so that their share price will go up. Lastly, the company may need to incorporate the trade union in all disciplinary cases that may be presented to the management. This will ensure that free, fair and just disciplinary measures have been issued to the defaulting employee. This will continually make the Disney Resorts and parks the place to be year in year out.

References

Pulakos, E. (2005). Selection Assessment Methods: A guide to implementing formal assessments to build a high-quality workforce. Alexandria: SHRM Foundation.

 

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