Employee turnover is one of the chronic challenges facing every business and can lead to significant losses if not mitigated in advance. The term refers to the average number of employees who leave an organization or a company over a certain period. Employee turnover involves those who quit the job voluntarily and those fired by the organization. Voluntary turnover is caused by factors that mainly cause employee job dissatisfaction (Ehsan, 2019). Walt Disney is among the most prominent entertainment with high employee turnover rates than its competitors. This has negatively impacted the profit margins, causing the business to suffer losses. Overcoming this weakness requires a deeper understanding, addressing the underlying reasons for the high turnover, and implementing strategies to improve employee retention. The following are some ways to help turn this weakness into a strength.
The first step is to thoroughly analyze the problems that may be causing the high turnover rates. The high turnover rates can often signify problems with the organization’s recruiting procedures, benefits, and rewarding structure, culture, poor employee-to-employer relationships, and limited training and career development opportunities.
Provide benefits, competitive pay, and on-time salary payment. Employees typically require reasonable payment to cover their expenses like housing and food and extra money for extra expenditure. Providing benefits and rewards motivates the workers and makes them feel their efforts are valued hence remaining loyal to the organization. Moreover, employees’ salaries should be disbursed on time to ensure that employees meet their needs on time. The Disney Company should also pay competitive salaries based on prevailing wages of similar jobs around the area. To achieve this, the company needs to conduct market research.
Provide career development opportunities through training and coaching to enable them to learn new skills. Employees need time to time for career advancement, and job stagnation may make the employees look for another job with advancement opportunities (Wang, 2020). Moreover, there should be a fair promotion of responsibilities among their workers.
The Walt Disney Company should also provide flexible working schedules, enabling workers to adjust their working time. This brings about work-life balance, a significant factor in retaining employees.
Moreover, the company should improve employee engagement by involving them in providing feedback and views and considering their concerns. Managers should also be trained in leadership skills to enhance good employee relationships.
Decreasing turnover rates improves Disney’s reputation to the external audience hence marketing itself. These actions have a positive impact on the finances. Retaining employees cut the costs of finding and training new employees. The company can also retain its highly productive employees hence sustaining performance and profitability. The training moreover increases the productivity of workers hence increasing productivity (Li et al., 2022). Training managers improve leadership skills, hence improving management, which ensures healthy relationships with employees. Moreover, proper employee engagement provides insights about employees’ concerns which enables the management to attend to the claims, therefore, ensuring employee satisfaction. Overcoming high turnover rates ensures a good flow of operations that would have been interfered with by workers leaving.
Organizational culture has a significant impact on determining the progress and success of any organization. The change in the Disney workplace structure requires developing an effective strategy and program to restore trust, respect, and a positive working environment for all employees. The announcement, marketing, and promotion are the initial steps in implementing the program and can be achieved through the following processes. Creating a new brand identity for the program is the first step. Brand identity should highlight the new company values, initiatives, and goals using its logo and a tagline that communicates the program’s aims and importance. The mission and vision of the company should also be slightly changed to indicate inclusivity and care for all employees. Develop a communication strategy highlighting the company’s target audiences and aims through various channels, including emails and other internal media platforms. Hosting a launching event to introduce the program to all Disney employees. The event should motivate the workers and create an exciting and enthusiastic atmosphere for the program.
Additionally, training materials should be ready to ensure the employees have everything to participate in the program. Advertising the program through social media campaigns, workplace posters, and personal employee invitations encourages employee participation. Lastly, proper metrics, including surveys, should be laid out to ensure the evaluation of the program’s progress.
The marketing action to reverse Disney’s negative impression involves investing in advertising campaigns that would highlight the crisis communication plan and use storytelling. The crisis communication should describe how the company would react to future incidences and show its commitment and desire to create an inclusive and respectful work environment (Abo-Murad, 2019). The storytelling should involve people of various employee diversity, including women, LGBTQ members, and people with disabilities, who will positively highlight the importance and need for creating a healthy and respectful working environment.
These actions help build trust and enhance the positivity in the company’s brand and reputation hence ensuring the company’s marketing. The program requires a considerable amount of funds to facilitate it. However, after the program is successful, sales will increase due to good Disney’s image and reputation to the external audiences. The actions will impose more responsibilities and commitment on the management as they should ensure proper actions are taken when harassment occurs. Disney’s operations will be boosted due to the excellent employee and management relations created by the respectful workplace.
References
Abo-Murad, M., & Abdullah, A. K. (2019). Turnover culture and crisis management: Insights from Malaysian hotel industry. Academy of Strategic Management Journal, 18(2), 1-14.
Ekhsan, M. (2019). The influence job satisfaction and organizational commitment on employee turnover intention. Journal of Business, Management, & Accounting, 1(1).
Li, Q., Lourie, B., Nekrasov, A., & Shevlin, T. (2022). Employee turnover and firm performance: Large-sample archival evidence. Management Science, 68(8), 5667-5683.
Wang, Q., & Wang, C. (2020). Reducing turnover intention: perceived organizational support for frontline employees. Frontiers of Business Research in China, 14(1), 1-16.