Cirque Du Soleil Case Analysis

Cirque du Soleil case analysis

Overview

Cirque Du Soleil is a circus, which was founded by groups of road performers in 1984. Those groups of street performers were known as Le Club des Talons Hauts that means high-heels club. At first, Managed equally by two owners: Guy Laliberte and Daniel Gautier. Laliberte bought Gautier’s half in 1987. When the company began its operation in 1984, there were only 73 employees and now the company has more than 2100 employees globally.  Employees and workers of Cirque du Soleil include 500 artists. The workforce of the circus is based on more than 40nationalities with more than 25 languages spoken by their employees. However, Laliberte refused to go public because that it would constrain Cirque’s creative freedom.

SWOT Analysis

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Issue Analysis and Alternatives

HR problems

The main issue identified in the case is hiring and retaining employees in the Cirque. Retaining talents in the organization are important because Cirque engaged in entertainment are based on creative, specialized, and perfect talents, who can provide excellent shows. Talent management need to make their artists satisfied and enjoy working at circus so as to make business profitable in a long-run. With a high turn-over rate, Cirque cannot retain talents in their organization which lead the issue of lacking talents. Besides, hiring and recruiting are always cost lots of time and spend big amount of money. In order to find a perfect talent for a show, the casting director often traveled to more than 20 countries to meet with local artists and hold auditions. The company required artists both on quantity and quality. During the whole process, they analyze accountability, creativity, passion, commitment and team work skills, which is a costly and time-consuming procedure.

There are several secondary issues faced by the company that was an obstacle for the company’s development. Firstly, cultural difference was a big issue among employees of Cirque Du Soleil. Coming from various culture background, they have different habits, native language, religions, and so on. As a result of cultural differences, communication problem arises as well because people from different countries do not understand the languages spoken by others. In addition, staff should be adaptable and resourceful to handle various situations and take care of their artists. They need to do everything in order to keep a stable environment for artists. Thus losing work-life balance become another problem.

Alternatives

Offer attractive benefits

In order to retain employees, the organization can offer attractive and competitive benefits to their employees. Increase in benefits motivate employees to stay in Cirque Du Soleil. For example, giving health insurance and benefits with respect to their health risk because the lives of performers are always at risk and the injury rate is also very high.

Pros: Decreasing turn-over rate

Results in high staff satisfaction.

Employee are more willing to perform better and work harder