Netflix Culture Analysis Paper Example

Netflix connects lots of people with lots of stories. The company boasts of having a hundred million members globally. Entertainment is the main objective at Netflix. Regardless of how big or small, genre, employees at the company are stimulated by entertainment. The culture at Netflix encourages working together as employees to grow and serve its members. Culture has been key to the success of Netflix. It assists in attracting and retaining stunning colleagues. Working at Netflix is made more satisfying by its culture. Netflix strives to employ the best; the company values integrity, respect, excellence, and collaboration. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and evaluate two of the seven aspects of Netflix culture, high performance and Context not control. This essay goes further to suggest ways in which relevant HRM concepts can be applied by Netflix to ensure success.

High Performance

Netflix believes that a great workplace is made up of Stunning Colleagues not benefits like espresso, great parties or nice offices. Netflix participates in all these but only to attract and retain fabulous workers. Netflix also tries to employ but offer a generous severance package to employees who exhibit adequate performance (Slideshare.net, 2017). The management hires, develops, and off-loads smartly, to remain with only the best. To this point, the HRM concepts applied are processes in Human Resource Management, Typical functions of an HR manager, and performance management.

Processes in Human Resource Management

One process in HRM applied by Netflix is human resource planning which is the method of people forecasting. It also includes promotion, evaluation, and layoff. Human resource planning involves recruitment, selection, hiring, training and development (Managementstudyguide.com, 2017).

Typical Functions of a HR Manager

The typical role of the HR manager would involve the entry to exit management of the employee lifecycle. The HR manager at Netflix takes care of everything employee-related right from the time the employee joins the company till the time when the colleague quits, retires or is laid-off from Netflix. The organization looks at each of these activities, in turn, hiring is performed in collaboration with the managers who publicize their requirements occasionally on the type of employees they need and the total recruits they want. As soon as the HR manager receives the request, he or she has to search the market for recruits. After shortlisting is through, the interview follows. Holding interviews is the process where the HR manager either interviews the recruits personally or gives the duty of evaluating the potential recruits to the team responsible for staffing (Armstrong, Armstrong and Taylor, 2017).

After interviewing the recruits, the HR manager has to decide the benefits and remuneration of the candidates. Usually, this is the stage where the HR manager at Netflix or other organizations plays an essential role in determining the best fitting position of the candidate and chooses the significant amount of salary and benefits appropriate to the new role.

Performance Management as a HRM concept

Managers at Netflix periodically administer the Keeper Test of which they assess which of their employees they would keep if the employee told them they were leaving for a similar job. Here the performance management as an HR concept is utilized. Performance management is the method of reviewing a workers performance during the previous cycle or year and determining where the employee stands as far as their colleagues in the same level are concerned. Usually, the process of performance management commences a couple of months before the end of the appraisal cycle (Jobs.netflix.com, 2017). The appraisal cycle can be semi-annually or annually, a process dependent upon the guidelines set by the company. Additionally, the appraisal cycle is either centered on the fiscal year or the calendar year meaning that it can run from April to March of the following year or January to December of the same year. Similarly, the appraisal cycle can be semi-annual.

Netflix considers itself a corporate team. The company maintains that the more talent they possess, the more they can achieve. Internal cutthroat behavior is unacceptable at Netflix. The company values loyalty and working smart instead of working hard. The company does not tolerate brilliant Jerks at all. Netflix high-performance culture favors employees that thrive on excellence, candor, and change. Some people, however, value stability and job security over performance and do not like this culture, at times they feel fearful at Netflix and very bitter when let go. Netflix should apply a few retention strategies to deal with employee strategies.

Retention Strategies

Employee retention strategies in any company would fundamentally comprise of a plan for addressing employee grievances and the various approaches for addressing employee concerns. These strategies enable the employees to forward any work-related problem concerning pay, role, and responsibilities to the HR manager for each department at Netflix and expect to receive a reasonable inquiry in the process (Ivancevich and Konopaske, 2013).

Job rotation is a brilliant technique that involves swapping employees either inter-departmentally or within divisions with massive stress on ensuring that they operate in fields other than the ones they are accustomed to. The outcome is that these employees would receive appropriate training on skills outside of their normal job description resulting in greater inspiration to acquire additional skills and inspire them to accomplish better. The significance of mitigation and redressing employee grievances is crucial to a company's success. This is the most crucial and critical element of the HRM plan. Recent studies have indicated that a worker with unresolved matters waiting for resolution is twice more probable to quit the organization than other colleagues. Therefore, all energies must be directed towards remedying the complaints of the employees.

Context, not Control

Top-notch managers at Netflix must be in-tune with how to achieve great results by setting the proper context, instead of trying to affirm control. The right context involves embracing strategy, metrics, assumptions, objectives, clearly-defined roles, knowledge of the stakes, and transparency around decision- making. Superiors need to evade top-down decision making, committees, management approval, planning, and process valued more than results. A good context links to the companys goals prioritizes matters, insists on precision and refinement, and defines success (Jobs.netflix.com, 2017). The organization advises the managers that when one of their talented people does something dumb, do not blame them instead ask yourself what context you failed to set. Managers are also discouraged from asserting control. Managing through context at Netflix applies the role of the HR manager in People enabling and empowerment concept.

Role of HR Manager in People Enabling and Empowerment

It is evident that the managers at Netflix empower their employees. They focus on assisting the workers by constantly seeking feedback, providing people support to the employees and suggesting improvements. Usually, the workers ranked above the team leader have face-to-face talks with the HR management where they discuss all the concerns. These meetings also offer the employees a chance to express their concerns and point to any complaints that they might have about their occupations, effort, or the business in general.

A people manager is usually assigned to the team members and is responsible for performing these tasks as well as ensuring that the workers are acting to their potential. Furthermore, the HRM together with the line managers offers training in skills like leadership, communication, and personal relations (Wilkinson and Johnstone, 2016). Certainly, many entertainment companies have established a set decorum for its workers to partake in leadership development training that reveals the best in them and prepare them for future roles as managers and CEOs. On the other hand, Netflix should apply talent management to nurture its employees.

Talent Management by Successful companies

A feature of successful talent management is facilitating both horizontal and vertical job opportunities for the current personnel. Swapping roles means that the workers at Netflix should be provided with diverse career options that would facilitate the swapping of roles and find gratification in the role they have selected. The main reason why this feature is imperative is that frequently, most companies suppress their employees by not enabling them to change their job responsibilities resulting in widespread frustration among the workforce. Another aspect that Netflix needs to consider to achieve successful talent management is providing their employees with different working premises. Such a move is not to simply relocate talent to where there is none, but similarly, the employees personal development is considered (van Donk and Esser, 1992). The idea here is that successful talent management necessitates that the staff feels privileged, not fearful working for Netflix and their desires for fulfillment and self-actualization be catered by the company.

Conclusion

The culture at Netflix encourages independent decision-making by employees, sharing of information openly, broadly, and deliberately. The culture also supports being extraordinarily candid with each to achieve high performance. However the company needs to apply a few aspects of HRM such as talent management to ensure continued success. Human Resource Management needs to be integrated with the general approach to provide better returns to the organizations in terms of ROI (Return on Investment) and guarantee effective use of people for every amount spent on them. Applying these concepts of HRM will safeguard the interests of its employees while ensuring organizational success.

References

Arfa Software Technology Park. (2017). Seventeen HRM Key Concepts | Arfa Software Technology Park. [Online] Available at: https://titantwister.com/hrm-key-concepts.

Armstrong, M., Armstrong, M. and Taylor, S. (2017). Armstrong's handbook of human resource management practice.

Beardwell, J. and Thompson, A. (2017). Human resource management. Harlow, United Kingdom: Pearson Education.

Belloc, H. (1967). On. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press.

DeCenzo, D., Robbins, S. and Verhulst, S. (2013). Human resource management. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Foot, M., Hook, C. and Jenkins, A. (2016). Introducing human resource management. Harlow, England [u.a.]: Pearson.

Gabriel, K. (2015). Organizational Development, Organizational Culture and Organizational Change. SSRN Electronic Journal.

Heery, E. and Noon, M. (2009). A dictionary of human resource management. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ivancevich, J. and Konopaske, R. (2013). Human resource management. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Irwin.

Jobs.netflix.com. (2017). Work at Netflix. [Online] Available at: https://jobs.netflix.com/culture/#introduction.

Keresztes, G. and Pirger, T. (2014). Innovation and Organizational Culture Change Management Issues in a Financial Institutions Organizational Culture. Gazdasag es Tarsadalom, 4.

Managementstudyguide.com. (2017). Importance of HRM for Organizational Success. [Online] Available at: http://managementstudyguide.com/importance-of-hrm.htm.

Managementstudyguide.com. (2017). Processes in Human Resource Management. [Online] Available at: http://managementstudyguide.com/processes-in-human-resource-management.htm.

Managementstudyguide.com. (...