Employee Retention of Wizards of the Coast : Wizards of the Coast (often referred to as WotC or simply Wizards) is an American publisher of games, primarily based on fantasy and science fiction themes. Originally a basement-run role-playing game publisher, the company popularized the collectible card game genre with Magic: The Gathering in the mid-1990s, acquired the popular Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game by purchasing the failing company TSR, and experienced tremendous success by publishing the licensed Pokémon Trading Card Game. The company's corporate headquarters are located in Renton, Washington.[1]
Today, Wizards of the Coast publishes role-playing games, board games, and collectible card games. They have received numerous awards, including several Origins Awards. The company has been a subsidiary of Hasbro since 1999.
When Wizards of the Coast still was a small company and Magic a less sophisticated product, some Wizards of the Coast employees were known to create their own Magic cards and hand them around within the company. Some of these cards were created by Cindy Vanoos. While not being an employee herself, she had good connections to the company. She created her cards by using original Magic backsides and glueing her own laser-printed fronts onto them. Very few copies have survived until today.
Two of Cindy Vanoos' cards, Painful Hedgehog and Urza's Lawn Ornament, also made an appearance in one of Wizards of the Coast's God books right after the release of Antiquities. These God books were binders which held one of each Magiccard ever made. They were used mostly by customer service. To avoid risking theft of the steadily value-increasing cards, they were later on replaced by the Magic Encyclopedia book series.
Donald J. Henry, a former employee at Wizards of the Coast, the company behind Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering, is facing felony charges after admitting to the theft of 200 rare Magic cards.
Wizards of the Coast noticed Henry's shady dealings after another employee noticed a vendor at a Magic tournament in Portland, Oregon, trying to sell the dozens of rare, promotional cards. This employee was able to confirm that the vendor was connected to Henry, who was fired in September after an investigation was launched. It didn't take long for Wizards to discover that Henry had made seventy trips to the storage locker where the cards were kept, far more visits than his job required.
Wizards of the Coast staff met with the vendor and were able to recover 1,753 cards with a value of just under $45,000. The total value of the stolen goods is thought to be much higher however, as the vendor had already sold some of the cards. Following his arrest, Henry admitted to stealing 200 of the cards, but prosecutors are alleging that he actually stole all of them.
As nefarious schemes go, this one ain't great, especially if the tournament in question was the Wizards of the Coast-backed Portland leg of the Magic: The Gathering Grand Prix. It's possible, although seemingly unlikely, that Henry's vendor acquaintance didn't know the cards were stolen, and so didn't think anything of bringing them to the tournament, but if that is the case, it just shows how shaky Henry's plan was.
Hasbro enjoys excellent employee and labor relations. Periodically, the company surveys employees on a variety of workplace dimensions and in 2006 completed a global on-line survey in 12 areas including: Pride & Commitment, Leadership, Compensation & Benefits; Clarity of Strategy; Career Development; Teamwork; Customer Satisfaction & Quality; Performance Management; Performance Enablement; Treatment & Fairness; Diversity & Work-life Balance; and Communication.
While the survey prompted some action to improve a few aspects of our workplace environment, employee feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with 80% of employees worldwide indicating they would recommend Hasbro to others as a good place to work and 70% overall satisfaction with Hasbro. This strong positive sentiment is also reflected in the company’s relatively low voluntary turnover rate in the U.S. of less than 7% in our salaried workforce.
Hasbro maintains two games manufacturing facilities, one in East Longmeadow, MA, USA and the other in Waterford, Ireland. Production workers in both facilities are represented by unions/works councils and both environments enjoy excellent labor-management relations. There have been no work interruptions attributable to labor actions.
The company also works closely with other individual country works councils throughout Europe. Annually Hasbro convenes the Hasbro European Employees Forum (HEEF) for representatives from the European works councils. The aim of the HEEF is to provide information about the company’s performance as well as to provide insight into future business developments and initiatives. The most recent HEEF occurred in June 2007 in Nice. There were attendees from the works councils in UK, France, Belgium, Ireland, Spain, Germany, and Poland. Some of the agenda subjects included an update on company performance, Direct to Consumer business model, environmental and “green” initiatives, and emerging markets.
success. The company benchmarks its competitive position in the relevant labor markets in establishing competitive pay and benefits programs. Hasbro strives to be an employer of choice around the world. Wherever practical, Hasbro believes in emphasizing a strong pay for performance perspective in each employee’s total rewards package through merit based pay increases and variable bonus programs based upon company, business unit and individual performance.
In many Hasbro locations around the globe, considerable workplace flexibility has been employed on a local level to provide employees and management with the ability to adapt company-wide programs to fit local environments. For instance, our Hasbro Hours program provides for compressed work schedules at the beginning of the work week that allow for half work days on Fridays and alternative work schedules to accommodate family commitments. Hasbro’s Wizards of the Coast unit in Renton, WA, U.S. offers an on-site child care facility. Other locations, including both Rhode Island locations, offer on-site exercise facilities.
Wizards of the Coast is to be considered the top forerunner in hobby gaming. They develop and publish such games as Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons, and even a plethora of Star Wars products. As a business they require employees to create these magical games, and for these employees to be happy they need to be properly compensated. Much like many other national companies, Wizards of the Coast has a fairly standard compensation and benefits system in place. By having this system in place they are keeping their talented people happy in order to keep a hold on them. Wizards of the Coast has many forms of compensations, but first, what exactly is a compensations and benefits system?
According to Joseph Martocchio, compensation represents the rewards employees receive for performing their jobs. This includes rewards such as wages, health insurance, retirement plans, and even paid time off. These rewards can also be split up into both intrinsic and extrinsic compensation. Intrinsic
compensation reflects the employee's psychological mind-sets that can result from performing their jobs (Martocchio). Their mind-set can be influenced by the skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback of the job. On the other end of the spectrum there are the extrinsic forms of compensation which can be summed up as both monetary and non monetary rewards. This style of rewards include wages, salaries, social security, worker's comp, various insurances, retirement plans, paid time-off, and accommodations (Martocchio).
The advantages of having a good benefits plan is twofold, as it benefits both the employee as well as the employer. From an employee's point of view the benefits create a peace of mind which leads to better productivity. Additionally, employees with personal life insurance can receive added protection. Finally, confidence in company's employee benefits plans boost staff morale and pride in the company.
Wizards of the Coast filed a lawsuit against Daron Rutter, then administrator of the MTGSalvation website (on which he is known as "Rancored Elf").[31] The charges stemmed from Rutter publicly posting confidential prototypes for upcoming Magic: The Gathering card sets to the MTGSalvation forums,[31] ten months before the cards were to be released.[32] Mark Rosewater explained the outcome: "I can say that we [Wizards of the Coast] settled the lawsuit with Rancored Elf out of court to both parties' satisfaction."[32]
Paizo Publishing's license to produce Dragon and Dungeon magazines, which Paizo had been publishing since it spun off from Wizards of the Coast's periodicals department in 2002, expired in September 2007. Wizards then moved the magazines to an online model.[33][34] On June 6, 2008, Wizards released the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, with the retail availability of a new set of core rulebooks. Wizards began introducing 4th Edition online content in Dragon and Dungeon magazines. 4th Edition is designed to offer more streamlined game play, while the new rules framework intended to reduce the preparation time needed to run a game and make the game more accessible to new players.[35]
April 6, 2009, Wizards of the Coast suspended all sales of its products for the Dungeons & Dragons games in PDF format from places such as ONEBOOKSHELF.com and its subsidiaries RPGNow.com and DRIVETHRURPG.com. This coincides with a lawsuit brought against eight people[36] in an attempt to prevent future piracy of their books, and includes the recent 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons products that were made available through these places as well as all older editions PDFs of the game.
Today, Wizards of the Coast publishes role-playing games, board games, and collectible card games. They have received numerous awards, including several Origins Awards. The company has been a subsidiary of Hasbro since 1999.
When Wizards of the Coast still was a small company and Magic a less sophisticated product, some Wizards of the Coast employees were known to create their own Magic cards and hand them around within the company. Some of these cards were created by Cindy Vanoos. While not being an employee herself, she had good connections to the company. She created her cards by using original Magic backsides and glueing her own laser-printed fronts onto them. Very few copies have survived until today.
Two of Cindy Vanoos' cards, Painful Hedgehog and Urza's Lawn Ornament, also made an appearance in one of Wizards of the Coast's God books right after the release of Antiquities. These God books were binders which held one of each Magiccard ever made. They were used mostly by customer service. To avoid risking theft of the steadily value-increasing cards, they were later on replaced by the Magic Encyclopedia book series.
Donald J. Henry, a former employee at Wizards of the Coast, the company behind Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering, is facing felony charges after admitting to the theft of 200 rare Magic cards.
Wizards of the Coast noticed Henry's shady dealings after another employee noticed a vendor at a Magic tournament in Portland, Oregon, trying to sell the dozens of rare, promotional cards. This employee was able to confirm that the vendor was connected to Henry, who was fired in September after an investigation was launched. It didn't take long for Wizards to discover that Henry had made seventy trips to the storage locker where the cards were kept, far more visits than his job required.
Wizards of the Coast staff met with the vendor and were able to recover 1,753 cards with a value of just under $45,000. The total value of the stolen goods is thought to be much higher however, as the vendor had already sold some of the cards. Following his arrest, Henry admitted to stealing 200 of the cards, but prosecutors are alleging that he actually stole all of them.
As nefarious schemes go, this one ain't great, especially if the tournament in question was the Wizards of the Coast-backed Portland leg of the Magic: The Gathering Grand Prix. It's possible, although seemingly unlikely, that Henry's vendor acquaintance didn't know the cards were stolen, and so didn't think anything of bringing them to the tournament, but if that is the case, it just shows how shaky Henry's plan was.
Hasbro enjoys excellent employee and labor relations. Periodically, the company surveys employees on a variety of workplace dimensions and in 2006 completed a global on-line survey in 12 areas including: Pride & Commitment, Leadership, Compensation & Benefits; Clarity of Strategy; Career Development; Teamwork; Customer Satisfaction & Quality; Performance Management; Performance Enablement; Treatment & Fairness; Diversity & Work-life Balance; and Communication.
While the survey prompted some action to improve a few aspects of our workplace environment, employee feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with 80% of employees worldwide indicating they would recommend Hasbro to others as a good place to work and 70% overall satisfaction with Hasbro. This strong positive sentiment is also reflected in the company’s relatively low voluntary turnover rate in the U.S. of less than 7% in our salaried workforce.
Hasbro maintains two games manufacturing facilities, one in East Longmeadow, MA, USA and the other in Waterford, Ireland. Production workers in both facilities are represented by unions/works councils and both environments enjoy excellent labor-management relations. There have been no work interruptions attributable to labor actions.
The company also works closely with other individual country works councils throughout Europe. Annually Hasbro convenes the Hasbro European Employees Forum (HEEF) for representatives from the European works councils. The aim of the HEEF is to provide information about the company’s performance as well as to provide insight into future business developments and initiatives. The most recent HEEF occurred in June 2007 in Nice. There were attendees from the works councils in UK, France, Belgium, Ireland, Spain, Germany, and Poland. Some of the agenda subjects included an update on company performance, Direct to Consumer business model, environmental and “green” initiatives, and emerging markets.
success. The company benchmarks its competitive position in the relevant labor markets in establishing competitive pay and benefits programs. Hasbro strives to be an employer of choice around the world. Wherever practical, Hasbro believes in emphasizing a strong pay for performance perspective in each employee’s total rewards package through merit based pay increases and variable bonus programs based upon company, business unit and individual performance.
In many Hasbro locations around the globe, considerable workplace flexibility has been employed on a local level to provide employees and management with the ability to adapt company-wide programs to fit local environments. For instance, our Hasbro Hours program provides for compressed work schedules at the beginning of the work week that allow for half work days on Fridays and alternative work schedules to accommodate family commitments. Hasbro’s Wizards of the Coast unit in Renton, WA, U.S. offers an on-site child care facility. Other locations, including both Rhode Island locations, offer on-site exercise facilities.
Wizards of the Coast is to be considered the top forerunner in hobby gaming. They develop and publish such games as Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons, and even a plethora of Star Wars products. As a business they require employees to create these magical games, and for these employees to be happy they need to be properly compensated. Much like many other national companies, Wizards of the Coast has a fairly standard compensation and benefits system in place. By having this system in place they are keeping their talented people happy in order to keep a hold on them. Wizards of the Coast has many forms of compensations, but first, what exactly is a compensations and benefits system?
According to Joseph Martocchio, compensation represents the rewards employees receive for performing their jobs. This includes rewards such as wages, health insurance, retirement plans, and even paid time off. These rewards can also be split up into both intrinsic and extrinsic compensation. Intrinsic
compensation reflects the employee's psychological mind-sets that can result from performing their jobs (Martocchio). Their mind-set can be influenced by the skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback of the job. On the other end of the spectrum there are the extrinsic forms of compensation which can be summed up as both monetary and non monetary rewards. This style of rewards include wages, salaries, social security, worker's comp, various insurances, retirement plans, paid time-off, and accommodations (Martocchio).
The advantages of having a good benefits plan is twofold, as it benefits both the employee as well as the employer. From an employee's point of view the benefits create a peace of mind which leads to better productivity. Additionally, employees with personal life insurance can receive added protection. Finally, confidence in company's employee benefits plans boost staff morale and pride in the company.
Wizards of the Coast filed a lawsuit against Daron Rutter, then administrator of the MTGSalvation website (on which he is known as "Rancored Elf").[31] The charges stemmed from Rutter publicly posting confidential prototypes for upcoming Magic: The Gathering card sets to the MTGSalvation forums,[31] ten months before the cards were to be released.[32] Mark Rosewater explained the outcome: "I can say that we [Wizards of the Coast] settled the lawsuit with Rancored Elf out of court to both parties' satisfaction."[32]
Paizo Publishing's license to produce Dragon and Dungeon magazines, which Paizo had been publishing since it spun off from Wizards of the Coast's periodicals department in 2002, expired in September 2007. Wizards then moved the magazines to an online model.[33][34] On June 6, 2008, Wizards released the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, with the retail availability of a new set of core rulebooks. Wizards began introducing 4th Edition online content in Dragon and Dungeon magazines. 4th Edition is designed to offer more streamlined game play, while the new rules framework intended to reduce the preparation time needed to run a game and make the game more accessible to new players.[35]
April 6, 2009, Wizards of the Coast suspended all sales of its products for the Dungeons & Dragons games in PDF format from places such as ONEBOOKSHELF.com and its subsidiaries RPGNow.com and DRIVETHRURPG.com. This coincides with a lawsuit brought against eight people[36] in an attempt to prevent future piracy of their books, and includes the recent 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons products that were made available through these places as well as all older editions PDFs of the game.
Last edited by a moderator: