Motivation Problems at Holiday World

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Overview & Methods
Holiday World and Splashin’ Safari is a seasonal theme and water park located in Santa Claus, Indiana. This is also an organization which I have previously worked at for six seasons. Having a slogan of “Number 1 for Family Fun!,” Holiday World strives to provide for their guests two affordable theme parks with a fun and family oriented environment. They also pride themselves on having world-class rides and entertainment, free soft drinks, friendly employees, immaculately clean grounds, and providing outstanding service. Holiday World offers a variety of full-time and seasonal job opportunities which are broken down into different departments. Some of these departments include admissions, entertainment, food and beverage, grounds, lifeguards and slide attendants, maintenance, security, and rides. This report will focus on the food and beverage department. The work environment for food and beverage employees can often be hectic and stressful. Employees are expected to serve quality food to thousands of guests each day in a timely and efficient manner. At the same time, employees must also maintain Holiday World’s reputation as the friendliest and cleanest park in the world. Effectively being able to work in teams plays a huge role in this department.
Like any organization, Holiday World desires to have a highly motivated and engaged group of employees. The following report will use two theories, the expectancy theory and job characteristics model, to help identify motivation problems at Holiday World and generate recommendations for improvements. In order to gather the required data, I have decided to use structured interviews with past coworkers. Considering the limited time and resources I am w...

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...ely have to put some restrictions on what can be rewarded. Another limitation is the potential for employees abusing the new responsibilities that comes with increased autonomy. For example, employees may try to leave for lunch or break at undesignated times and leave the food stand understaffed during a busy lunch rush. Supervisors in the different food stands will have to strictly enforce punishments for those that break the rules to ensure that others do not try to do the same. No matter what the limitations or obstacles are, with knowledge that there are motivation problems in the workplace, Holiday World would most likely be better off trying to implement some of the above recommendations than doing nothing at all.

Works Cited

Robbins, Stephen P., and Timothy A. Judge. Essentials of Organizational Behavior. 12th en. Boston: Pearson, 2014. Print.

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