Theory and practice of managing people - Essay Example

FollyWood is a large, open-air theme park where the vast majority of the employees serve on a seasonal basis. It was recently acquired by a large leisure company, Leisure, Inc., but is still run as a separate entity. FollyWood pursues a “hard approach” and does not exert any effort to generate employee commitment among its seasonal staff. As a result, the firm experiences high turnover among its seasonal staff, which is assumed to cause the fall in profits and increase in customer complaints.

In light of these antecedents, this report takes the position that FollyWood should assume a comprehensive approach towards reducing the turnover of seasonal staff and motivating its staff, both seasonal and permanent, towards more productive and fulfilling relations with the customers, the company and its leadership, their co-workers, and other parties they deal with at work. The report shall touch on: 1. Undertake a job analysis and restructuring program (Heron, 2005). It is likely that the number of seasonal workers may be reduced in favour of increasing the permanent staff.

This will require creating positions that may combine seasonal functions with permanent ones, or realising economies of scale organisation-wide by integrating operations and sharing personnel with other units of Leisure, Inc. Activities that may be accomplished long this line include: 1.1. Perform a job description analysis of existing positions. This will clarify what actions are expected of individual employees in order to set fair compensation horizontally and vertically throughout the organisation. 1.2.

Rationalise seasonal functions that may be combined to create more permanent or year-long regular jobs. The purpose of this task is to reduce the number of “seasonal” staff and instead increase the number of employees who would be able to dedicate their full-time efforts to the FollyWood. 1.4. Enhance job enrichment for currently existing positions. Job enrichment is