Introduction of the company
Coca cola is a multinational band that was founded in 1886. It is the largest company in the whole world that offers beverage services (Bodden, 2009, P.23). The beverages are non alcoholic which include water that is enhanced on carbonated flavors but exclude carbonation. The company’s headquarters are based in Atlanta, Georgia. The ingredients provided are flavoring and also provide products of water which is purified in powder form and some sweeteners.
Some of the company products include sprite, coca cola zero, minute maid, dasani, coca cola light, aquarius, diet coke, vitamin water among many others. To offer these products, the company has been able to network with distribution operators that can either be controlled or owned by other companies or through bottling partners, wholesalers, retailers and distributors that are independent on their own. For instance, the corporation today sells 25 brands in South Africa in partnership with four bottling partners named coca cola fortune, peninsula beverages, ABL, and coca cola shanduka. In terms of employment, coca cola employs approximately 9000 employees in South Africa and more than 700,000 employees worldwide. Consumers in over 200 nations, get access to the recognizable brands at a rate of more than 1.8 billion sales per day. Coca cola company focuses on healthy living, reduction of environmental degradation, creating a conducive environment for employees and enhance economic stability in the communities they operate in. recently, coca cola company together with their bottling partners ranked world’s top 10 private employers. It has now been in existence for approximately 126 years (Bodden, 2009, P.28).
Strategic human resource management practice
Human resource management is a process that involves employees in an organization where they are recruited, hired and trained (Dhar, 2008, P.77). Professionally, human resource managers have the responsibility to oversee and meditate workplace issues affecting the employees. This could either be discrimination or harassment. Generally HRM practice monitor employees right from the time they are hired in the organization. Once employees are hired, they are oriented and made familiar with activities ongoing in the organization and later on human resource managers give a report of the general performance of employees individually. Some of the HRM practices to be discussed are training and development, performance management and employee relations.
Employee relations
This is the correlation among employees and employers in an organization. It relays how well they relate which may determine the job performance of the employees minimizing issues such as harassment at work. When a service contract is signed, both parties should retain a signed copy. Collective bargaining is an employee relation practice which is essential to both the employers and employees.
Employers may decide to use recreation facilities where employees improve the social life which also boosts their work efficiency. Other employers practice motivation where they give rewards and other benefits to motivate employees to give their best. Satisfactory productivity is also a target in employee employer relationship. Employee relations also involve identifying problems amongst the employees, resolving those problems and preventing their occurrences (Ring and Van de Ven, 2012, P.107). The employer should take the responsibility of providing information about goals and policies of the organization to employees. This will give them better understanding and helps them identify and correct any misconduct or issues affecting them while working. It is the organization’s duty to prevent abuse of power or mistreatment and ensure employees are treated with respect. Employees are entitled to certain matters like promotions, raises and overtime pay.
However, loyalty is two ways hence employers are obliged to ample notice before job suspension, candor and respect to employees. The main principle of this practice is to structure some progress and come up with a sense of urgency.
Steps involved in employee relation
The steps analyzed are emphasized to help employees understand better changes within an organization and to take them positively to makes their environment self driven through their own initiatives that bring about positive change.
Step 1: Recognize
When employees perform best, the employer should recognize their effort towards success and provide them with motivational rewards (Bamberger and Meshoulam, 2010, P.33). This is a symbol of recognition which goes out of the way to motivate other staff to emulate the good example of hard work. On the contrarily, employers should also recognize problems or negative issues affecting the employees and find a solution immediately. For instance, Coca Cola Company should recognize top performing employees and reward them to implement the practice
Step 2: Listen
Some employees can be creative, coming up with ideas which could involve new innovations. Employers should listen to those ideas and nurture them to their maturity level. At the same time they should listen to feedback from both employees and consumers of the products and services. Coca Cola Company should listen to its employees because they are in contact with customers hence the are best suited to provide perfect information that will improve service delivery based on human capital and higher performance system.
Step 3: Communicate
Creating an upward sloping curve of the change curve, communication is necessary. Seminars and workshops will help in structuring the perfect communication channels between employers and employees. This gives solutions to concerns affecting the business and employees and other stakeholders.
Communication can also be done through development of employee newsletter and magazines and designation of community relations programs. Conducting opinion surveys on employees boosts productivity which is a principle in employee relations.
Employee relation also involves management of industrial relations, development of employee reward and recognition programs which is performance linked and ensuring legal compliance. Another effective strategy of employee relations is organizing social events and providing recreational facilities within the company
Coca Cola Company should take communication seriously so as to keep the organization on track creating a growth curve. Human resource managers at Coca Cola Company should implement the practice to their employees worldwide to promote productivity. Hence coca cola should allocate enough funds to budget for employee related issues.
Despite the cost effective practices, Coca Cola Company will benefit from the practice through increased sales percentage, increase of demand from consumers since with the feedback products are now tailor made to satisfy their needs, creation of new innovations from employees, larger market target and improved and better products and services. The company will benefit through improvement of labor turnover which is achieved through identification of retention solutions
Performance management
It is the process of developing, setting and stating standards of performance and managing them as well (Arias, Butler, Geringer, Kim, Scullion, Lowe, and Drost, 2009, P. 55). It is also known as the process which companies or firms arrange their systems, employees and resources to objectives and priorities strategically. It includes line mangers and their subordinates by jointly identifying mutual objectives leading to higher standards of the company. To assess the individual performance, most companies design scoring matrix for the assessment. An effective performance management process should cover staff involvement, utilization of talent, goal establishment and measurement and include past performance for comparison.
Establishment of objectives and standards is done and immediately communicated. It also enables appraisal conduction and giving back the feedback to achieve results so as to create growth both on employee’s individual level and organizational level. Performance management keep off misconduct and poor performance in any organization that implements the practice hence Coca Cola Company should not be exemption. Performance management can be long-cycle, short cycle or micro. Long cycle is done annually, semi annually or on quarterly basis while short cycle is done weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis. As for micro it’s done by minute, hour or daily basis. Hence Coca Cola Company should wisely decide which performance management it will operate with.
Below are some of the stages of performance management and steps to be followed:
Step 1: Observation and feedback
It is commonly known as coaching. It involve observing the performance of the employee once the objectives and standards are set and providing feedback on how well they respond . Human resource managers take the responsibility to encourage employees to improve especially those with strong performance. They should also provide motivation so as to achieve the expected results in performance.
Coca Cola Company will benefit from this strategy since it strengthens the employer/employee relationship, improved commitment of the employee, support provision, objectives and standards attainment and gives high self esteem to employees.
However, when exceptions are met successfully, employees should think about it and ask why, could be the exceptions are too low. Follow up meetings should be scheduled to monitor the performance more closely but should be behavior oriented not the personality.
Step 2: Performance appraisal
This is a process that entails evaluating of the past performance, the present and forecasting on the future performance. For the employees, performance appraisal helps them to take the job positively, feel motivated, appreciated in the organization, and informed about the ongoing activities. They also feel like participants in the process rather than like victims. Employers are obliged to prepare self evaluating questions to employees, and a draft appraisal which are informed on giving them an independent environment to answer the questions genuinely.
Coca Cola Company should practice performance appraisal so as to raise concerns if any and listen to the explanations given by employees
Step 3: Performance standards
Standards can be discussed or written but they have to exist, however written standards are preferred since they compare the employees’ performance and the expectations of the employer. They help set the line of performance measurement, either poor or strong. Performance standards are considered effective if they increase job satisfaction, give information to new employees and create strong relationships with employers. However, standards should be attainable and measurable and expressed in terms of time, quality and quantity. Coca Cola Company should set moderate standards to the employees to nurture continued success in the company
Step 4: Rewarding performance
High performers are rewarded in monetary terms or derivation of benefits for their contribution towards the success of a corporation. The contribution may be material or psychological as a mode of motivating employees to work harder. Managers view how well the objectives have been achieved through performance review.
Training and development
Development and training entails skill assessment and development activities that match employees’ needs and help identify the objectives. Employers should work with the employees to assess them to select training and development activities and provide feedback.
Talent management is a crucial process In training and development whereby managers recognize special talents amongst the employees and actualize the objectives. Succession planning and execution of training target are considered while assessing training needs. Attitude change workshops are created occasionally to change negative attitudes which help in monitoring and evaluation of performance. Training and development activities should target employees who give their best, high self esteem, creative, high morale and productivity and their skills are upgraded thus enabling the respective company to benefit.
This process helps get SWOT analysis. For instance strengths, weaknesses, opportunities available and threats of the organization are identified through SWOT analysis. Methods of training include on the job and off the job training through lectures, special study and laboratory training. While some training programs are team building skills training, workplace wellness, conflict management and communication skills training (Fine, 2009, P.67).
Training and development involve arranging for seminars for training and employee orientation, clarification of job duties, roles and descriptions and also helping the subordinate staff with plans of personal development. Investments in training and development increases job productivity and efficiency. It also leads to improvement of capabilities both on employee and organizational levels.
Money and time invested should be matched with the business objectives. In addition organizations should also assess the needs of the employee getting trained since different employees have different needs.
Training and development comprises three major principles which include: training, education and development training focus on the present, education oversees the future while development entail possible occurrences in future
The development and quality of employees is a main determinant on the profitability of the business in the long run thus it is a good idea to invest in skill development of employees to increase productivity
Steps in training and development
Step 1: Learning
New employees should be willing to learn the activities ongoing in the organization. Employers should use strategic learning techniques to make learning easier. Employees should learn some principles and facts to guide them along the job duties (Cascio, 2012, P.212)
Step 2: Reaction
The management should study the reaction of the trainees throughout the training program and can be done through discussion or questionnaires at the end of the particular development and training program.
Step 3: Behavior
Job performance has to be measured regardless of changes in the job hence trainee should have strong performance to be more productive.
Step 4: Evaluation
Training and development activities are evaluated how well the employee succeeds and the ratings given determine continuation of the job. The plan structured plays a major role in the evaluation process.
Conclusion
Human resource management practices discussed are vital in helping coca Cola Company to improve behavior in the organization such as flexibility, effective and efficient among staff members which in turn lead to gaining competitive edge through highly motivated employees that a ready to drive the objectives and goals of the company towards success.
The practices also help companies gain competitive advantage through use of different strategies. With the practice, Coca Cola Company could be the leading company in 5 years time with an improved environment and better working conditions for employees. This will motivate them to tailor services to customers according to their taste and preferences.
New and creative innovations will be achieved through staff support as well as minimal labor turnover and complains of conflicts. Effective human resource management leads to a good reputation of the company hence gaining more confidence to all the stakeholders. High degree of coordination and cooperation with management is achieved taking the company to a higher level of success. Enhancement of quality is a strategy also achieved from the human resource management practices if a fast decision making process is established in the company.
Reference list
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