Layoffs at Walt Disney World and other divisions of WDC

[asianway]

I work for a large manufacturing corporation in management and once a month all office staff (~250 people) go down to the floor and take over a machine from one of the operators to give them an extended lunch (1 hour instead of 30 minutes) and take the pulse of the front lines. Its not exactly the same as there are roughly 2-3 office bees for every 1 normal line operator but the line workers appreciate it and it alleviates some of the disconnect between the groups. I'd love to see TDO take an approach like this and have management work the front lines in randomly assigned areas once a quarter or so for a few hours to get a better feel of the actual park and not just percentages.

They do have Cross U, but its not mandatory, and amounts to waving with a Mickey hand or holding menus in front of the bakery...

 

[wedway71]

Maybe its me but I did not see anything on cuts for P&R???? I feel their pain though... I just went through taking away my bonus potential, pay freezes for God knows how long, and took away the 401k matching. And of course.. they added to my work load... OH WELL...

 

[GoalieGirl16]

I just hope they lay off people in the right areas. Amazingly, I have found there to be an incredible amount of cast members working around WDW - probably too many. Do you really need 8 people in the Animal Kingdom parking lot helping me park on a Sunday morning? No. The last few months, I have seen way too many cast members walking around aimlessly or socializing rather than working - and I think that's something management should be reviewing.

I haven't read the entire thread so forgive me if this has already been addressed but using parking is a really bad example. Did you need 8 people helping you park? Probably not but in 15 minutes to an hour traffic may increase tenfold. If there are too few cast members the parking lot can become a disaster area in minutes resulting in huge and I mean HUGE traffic backups that take forever to clear. During my time serving the gods of parking in the MGM lot parking was always letting people leave early once the rush was over. Parking is one of those weird areas where you need a huge number of people for a short period of time (like two hours) at the beginning and end of the day and a much smaller amount of people for the rest of the day.

 

[BigThunderMatt]

So fire those people or train them better. But I've never understood the arbitrary "hey ,find me 10% from anywhere!" tactic.

The problem is, many of the slackers are full-time, union-protected cast members that are near impossible to fire and have them stay fired. There's procedures to follow and 9 times out of 10 they just grieve their job back.

Don't want to get political here. I'm very pro-union, where it's actually needed. If you're in a service industry that deals with the general public on a regular basis and the level of business you receive is at least, in part, based on the level of service those guests receive, having a union to protect employees that do the very antithesis of whats expected of them is somewhat pointless.

California is a different story. They're not a right to work state.

 

[plutofan15]

Ahh there's the issue. You understand espns and not the entire company's. problem pin pointed!

Very true. Was just responding to a post that money that should be spent was being diverted to another division of the company. Of course money is shared between division of large companies. If anything, the situation would be reveresed. ESPN is a cash cow for the Disney company. Profits from ESPN are more than likely to diverted to other divisions who are either not as profitable or loosing money.

 

[plutofan15]

Really my wifes a paediatric specialist but I dont like kids so I wont be treating any.

Nor do I attempt to do any financial or accounting work. I do however have conversations with her and her co-workers.

 

[RSoxNo1]

Perhaps you missed my point in the last post. you refer to mba's as a group. I have an MBA and you constantly bash us. So in turn I will assume you are talking about me like I have plague or something.

Stop taking it personally. If we can't make fun of smart people, the terrorists have won.

 

[asianway]

BUMP

http://variety.com/2013/biz/news/di...offs-amid-planned-reorg-exclusive-1200333321/

 

[Soarin' Over Pgh]

It never ceases to amaze me that a company who makes so much money...needs to lay off employees.

 

[captainkidd]

I've never seen a board more money hungry than Disney's. It really is something.

 

[flynnibus]

It never ceases to amaze me that a company who makes so much money...needs to lay off employees.

generally the bigger a company gets.. the less efficient it becomes and reorgs like this are frequent. Sometimes they are motivated by financial crisis.. other times it's about cleaning up. Alas the cleaning up typically is motivated by higher profits instead of pure efficiencies.. so instead of reallocating resources, they just dump them

 

[asianway]

generally the bigger a company gets.. the less efficient it becomes and reorgs like this are frequent. Sometimes they are motivated by financial crisis.. other times it's about cleaning up. Alas the cleaning up typically is motivated by higher profits instead of pure efficiencies.. so instead of reallocating resources, they just dump them

Quoted for truth. And, there is a very short memory on these types of events. Within a year, theyll go on a hiring spree, get bloated, and need to dump the dead weight. Repeat.

 

[WDWFigment]

generally the bigger a company gets.. the less efficient it becomes and reorgs like this are frequent. Sometimes they are motivated by financial crisis.. other times it's about cleaning up. Alas the cleaning up typically is motivated by higher profits instead of pure efficiencies.. so instead of reallocating resources, they just dump them

TWDC not doubt has some serious diseconomies of scale, especially after making so many recent acquisitions. Analysts see this, and the bloated size of the Company, and demand cuts.

The problem, I suspect, is that the necessary purge is not based upon who/what actually needs to be cut, but largely on internal politics. Analysts are satisfied because cuts were made--even though they have no mechanism for measuring whether the right cuts were made.

 

[PhotoDave219]

TWDC not doubt has some serious diseconomies of scale, especially after making so many recent acquisitions. Analysts see this, and the bloated size of the Company, and demand cuts.

The problem, I suspect, is that the necessary purge is not based upon who/what actually needs to be cut, but largely on internal politics. Analysts are satisfied because cuts were made--even though they have no mechanism for measuring whether the right cuts were made.

Youre not suggesting that closing one of the best gaming studios in the business (LucasArts) was the wrong move when Disney's own gaming studios have sucked for years, are you?

 

[flynnibus]

TWDC not doubt has some serious diseconomies of scale, especially after making so many recent acquisitions. Analysts see this, and the bloated size of the Company, and demand cuts.

analysts don't care about your redundencies and efficencies as long as you hit your metrics. And Disney has been. It's when things aren't to expectations that people start questioning how the biz is structured and ran.

They like them as proof 'something is being done' more than actually being able to qualify the moves as improvements.

 

[WDWFigment]

Youre not suggesting that closing one of the best gaming studios in the business (LucasArts) was the wrong move when Disney's own gaming studios have sucked for years, are you?

I don't know enough about those two units to comment on them specifically (other than the obvious that Disney's games are constant disappointments), but I do know there are some units/areas within TWDC that have serious redundancies, and there are some that are short-staffed. And it wouldn't surprise me to see these new cuts affect the "wrong" units.

 

[Nubs70]

But they never reduce management. They always reduce the worker bees... and then wonder why their product has gone in the crapper?

Absolutely not true. Reductions in force apply to all levels of employment, not just at the lowest level. So WDW is looking to do a 10% RIF. Assuming a 4 level management structure with a 10:1 manager to employee ratio, you can expect 5 departments to each layoff:

• 1000 frontline CM's
• 100 1st level managers
• 10 2nd level managers
• 1 3rd level manager

This is just the nature of management structure. If you want an operation to fail in spectacular fashion, wipe out the upper level management first and work your way down to the frontline.

 

[GrumpyFan]

Youre not suggesting that closing one of the best gaming studios in the business (LucasArts) was the wrong move when Disney's own gaming studios have sucked for years, are you?

Calling them "one of the best in the business", is probably a stretch. While they have certainly turned out some decent titles over the years, they have also struggled in doing so, with leadership changes and a library that was mostly built on the Star Wars franchise. I think they made the right decision here, by cutting it loose, and choosing instead to license the characters/stories to other game studios. And yes, their own studios have sucked for years, but seem to be on a bit of an upswing of late. We'll just have wait and see how they fare in this highly competitive market. Who knows, they may even choose to use some of those characters and story-lines themselves.

 

[Nubs70]

I work for a large manufacturing corporation in management and once a month all office staff (~250 people) go down to the floor and take over a machine from one of the operators to give them an extended lunch (1 hour instead of 30 minutes) and take the pulse of the front lines. Its not exactly the same as there are roughly 2-3 office bees for every 1 normal line operator but the line workers appreciate it and it alleviates some of the disconnect between the groups. I'd love to see TDO take an approach like this and have management work the front lines in randomly assigned areas once a quarter or so for a few hours to get a better feel of the actual park and not just percentages.

This is known as "Management By Walking Around". I practice this whenever I get the chance and i really helps to understand the challenges your employees face. A concern that is brought to your attention can be dismissed as a complaint or someone trying to not do their job. Take the time to MBWA and often you find the concern is valid and needs to be fixed,

 

[ParentsOf4]

Absolutely not true. Reductions in force apply to all levels of employment, not just at the lowest level. So WDW is looking to do a 10% RIF. Assuming a 4 level management structure with a 10:1 manager to employee ratio, you can expect 5 departments to each layoff:

• 1000 frontline CM's
• 100 1st level managers
• 10 2nd level managers
• 1 3rd level manager

This is just the nature of management structure. If you want an operation to fail in spectacular fashion, wipe out the upper level management first and work your way down to the frontline.

Mostly true. It's fairly easy to order the termination of 1000 nameless faces at a remote corporate site but significantly harder to do so to an incompetent peer who happens to be a member of the same country club. It creates for some uncomfortable social situations that most senior executives don't have the stomach for.

At the highest levels, senior executives have lucrative contracts that need to be bought out. Hence, completely incompetent executives often receive golden parachutes to leave, announcing their plans to either move on or "spend more time with the family" with the millions they receive for performing so badly.

Sadly, it happens all the time.