CULTURE AT VIACOMBY ANTHONY ROWE

Chapter 4

ARTICLE OVERVIEW

• Viacommunity released an article titled: Work Life Balance.• The publication includes detailed information about practices that

increase employee satisfaction.

HISTORY

• Viacom is an American global mass media company with focus primarily in film and cable television. In terms of revenue, its currently the sixth largest broadcasting and cable company in the world.

• On December 31, 2005, Viacom was created as a spin-off from CBS Corporation.

• Viacom operates approximately 170 networks reaching 700 million subscribers in 160 countries.

CORPORATE CULTURE

• Corporate culture refers to the shared values, attitudes, standards, and beliefs that characterize members of an organization and define its nature.

• Corporate culture is rooted in an organization's goals, strategies, structure, and approaches to labor, customers, investors, and the greater community.

HUMAN RELATIONS APPROACH

• Human Relations Approach emphasizes the importance of human needs in the workplace.

FLEXIBILITY

• Viacom takes pride in providing flexible work schedules for their employees.

• Productivity increases when employees are able to choose when and where they work.

EXAMPLE:

• The Media & Technology Service section of the company has had much success recruiting parents that have small children.

• Viacom employees have access to up to 25 days per year of fully supervised day-care at centers throughout the U.S., along with home-based child and adult care for all employees and their families.

SUMMER FRIDAYS

• “In order to give people more time with their families in the summer, the company compresses work schedules between Memorial Day and Labor Day each year, giving employees either half days every Friday or alternate Fridays off.”

HUMAN RESOURCES APPROACH

• Human Resources approach concentrates on the contributions of all employees in reaching organizational goals.

EMPLOYEE IDEAS

• Viacom allows their employees to bring insights and ideas from their lives, communities and cultures that feed into the success of channels and brands.

NICKELODEON’S NICKMOM

• Nickmom is a successful programming/website/social media resource for working moms.

• It emerged out of the needs and insights of Nick’s own working mothers who wanted to create a space where moms could have fun

MENTORING

• Viacom has a reverse mentoring program that pairs members of the channel’s senior management team with Millennial mentors in order to understand their youthful audience.

KIDS DAY

KIDS DAY

• Viacom invites employees to bring their children to the office on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, converting offices and conference rooms throughout the company to activity and entertainment zones.

• Kids’ Day is a company tradition that tells employees how much Viacom appreciate them.

SUMMARY

• Viacom implements the human relations approach by creating programs that cater to family needs. They also display characteristics of the human resources approach by encouraging their employees to develop ideas for future shows. Overall, Viacom seems like a very employee friendly type of environment.

QUESTIONS

• Who came up with the idea to provide these resources for parents? Was it a high level executive or a low-level employee?

WORKS CITED

• Miller, K. (2015). Organizational communication: Approaches and processes (7th ed.). Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.

• V. (n.d.). Work/Life Balance. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from http://www.viacommunityreport.com/report/worklife-balance/