Week 15

This week I want to talk about Disney's attendance policy. Employees don't get a set number of sick days to use throughout the year like many other companies use. Instead, if you call in, sick or otherwise, you get a point on your record card. If you have 3 points in 30 days, or 6 points in 60 days, or 9 points in 90 days you get a reprimand. Five reprimands in  a year and you can be terminated. Other ways to earn points, full point or half a point, is to clock in late, forget to clock out, or have a no call/no show.

Even if you are legitimately sick, with a doctor's note, you still get a point on your record card. The only exception is that if you miss 3 days in a row due to being ill if you bring in a doctor's note to health services they will merge the 3points into a single point on your record card. You can only do this once every six months.

When I first heard of this policy I didn't agree with it. I felt that it penalized you even if you really were sick. I thought that it encouraged people to come into work even if they were ill and that just helps spread germs and sickness. However, after taking a harder look at it and seeing just how many days/time you need to miss in order to actually be in danger of losing your job, it doesn't seem like too bad of a policy. It just tends to gnaw at those, like me, who are a little OCD about points on their record cards. 

I can see why Disney uses this policy though. With 60,000 employees there needs to be a system in place to keep tabs on employees' attendance. This points system is easy for anyone to look up, employer and employee, and easy to see where the employee stands and their attendance history. The only other system I could come up with that would work would be to give each employee X amount of sick days for the year for the employee to use as they see fit. From an employee stand point this would be good because we would not have to worry about our record being affected by us calling in sick. However, looking at it from Disney's point of view, they might see a problem with this because it may give people incentive to just call in sick to use up their days even if they are not actually sick. This could present a problem for Disney on the busy holidays such as Christmas, New Years, Easter, and Thanksgiving, where employees might just call in so they can spend the day with their families.

Week 14

This week I finally got my Discovery Day, which is the orientation for Ecpot. My day was pushed back because of the mishap in my training and being assessed. So I have been working at Epcot for a few weeks already before I had my orientation. This presented me with the unique opportunity to take a step back and assess the orientation as a leader because I knew all the information being presented.

The class was led by two facilitators and we were split into two groups. We rode the backstage bus system and toured the front of the park. However, instead of just letting us in the back through a backstage gate we were forced to go through the turnstiles which I thought was needless. We then picked up a park map and took a ride on Spaceship earth which was something fun to do. After that we toured the entire front part of the park which is called Future World. The facilitator talked about each attraction and what it was all about. He asked question to the group to see if anyone knew anything about each attraction. Since I had already been working at Epcot for a bit I kept quiet and let the others try to answer because I knew all of the information. We then walked towards World Showcase but we could not walk through all the countries because that part of the park is not open till 11 and it was only 10 in the morning. Again, this seemed a little strange. Why weren't we allowed to walk back there when there was no one around?

Instead we took up a spot in front of the lagoon and just pointed to each country and talked about what was found there. Again, the facilitator was asking questions like, "What ride is there? What restaurants are there?" Everyone had to look at their maps to answer these questions. Then the facilitator got very specific asking us what bands play at each countries. I didn't even know the answers to all these questions because they are such a minute detail about each country.

We then met up with the other group and  talked about first aide and creating magical moments. We were also asked throughout the tour about The Disney Basics which I am well versed in by now. After that we walked back to the Cast Services Building and got a mini tour of it. Then we made our way back to the room where we learned a little about the history of Epcot which I found fascinating but then things got a little cheesy in my mind. We had about a 45 minute discussion on how important diversity is. I thought this time would have been better served giving more information about getting your costume, or taking the bus to the backstage areas in World Showcase which is very confusing the first time you have to use it. I thought I got a much more comprehensive orientation at Blizzard Beach than at Epoct. With Epcot being such a huge theme park things are on a much bigger scale and yet I felt like the orientation didn't tell the new cast members the really important things that would make their first few days easier.