An unsolicited suggestion:
On January 9th 2008 The Mountain Press printed an article concerning steps Dollywood was taking in the face of a weakening economy. The article reported the four top executives with the company will take a 5 percent pay cut this year, and pay for all park hosts has been frozen. Freezing the poverty level wages of the employees while cutting senior executives 5% is hardly equal with what is expected, no demanded, of those employees.
The faces of Dollywood are the poverty level paid employees not senior management. Loyalty is earned not demanded and if you want to continue to enjoy loyalty of your employees, assuming you have it, making their lives more difficult is not the way. Taking the unpopular step of freezing hourly rates is not necessary. You can control wages paid by the hours scheduled. The people not being scheduled understand but they do not understand their hourly rate being the same as last year. They feel unappreciated and they are correct.
The four top executives are being compensated for their past performance as well as the parks past performance. If the compensation of the four top executives goes up when the park does well their compensation should go down when the park does not do as well. If you expect Dollywood to perform at the same rate as it did in 2000 the four top executives should be compensated at the 2000 rate with bonuses if the park's performance exceeds expectations. But always comparable with the compensation received in the past for comparable park performance. Reducing the salaries of the four highest paid employees by 5% is silly. If each of the 4 receives $100,000 that will be a $5,000 reduction all the way to $95,000 for the next twelve months a combined savings of $20,000 hardly noticed by the park, with a reduction in income taxes and social security taxes hardly noticed by the manager as well.
If you do not like the 2000 rate of compensation how about something helpful like 30%-40% reduction? For the 4 senior managers that would be a combined $120,000-$160,000 reduction, possibly a more meaningful number and evidence the hourly paid employees are not carrying the weight of the problem on their shoulders. Talk about camaraderie everyone celebrating the good times and everyone sharing in the hard times.
A 5% is PR but not much else and appears to blame the parks problems on those who can least afford it. And the public knows it. Be careful how the public sees Dollywood management.
Regards,
John Jenkins
John Jenkins
865-803-8179 cell
Gatlinburg, TN
Email: jrjenki@yahoo.com
Email: jrjenki@yahoo.com
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