Title of Post: Unbottling Coca-Cola’s Employee Engagement Strategies
Organization Name: Coca-Cola
Industry: Beverage
Name of Contact: N/A
Web references: www.coca-colacompany.com
Who they are:
The Coca-Cola Company is an American multinational beverage corporation and manufacturer, retailer and marketer of non-alcoholic beverage concentrates and syrups.
The company is ranked as one of the worlds top ten private employers with over 700,000 system employees in more than 200 countries. It is the largest beverage company in the world with over 3,500 products. Their headquarters are located in Atlanta, Georgia, United States and the company was founded in 1886 by John Pemberton.
The Coca-Cola Company was honored by Fortune 2014 as the #6 Most Admired Company and rated top most diverse company by Diversity Inc.
Dedicated to their 2020 Vision, Coca-cola lands their focus on five key areas; profit, people, portfolio, partners and planet.
Description of how social media is used for business performance:
A few points taken from Coca-Cola’s Mission, Vision & Values shows that employee involvement/engagement are deep set. They aim to be ‘a great place to work’ by inspiring employees to be the best they can be. Their vision includes: embracing internal diversity, increasing employee system knowledge, and encouraging associates to ‘act like owners’ as proud ambassadors of the Coca-Cola brand. Associates are rewarded for problem solving and risk taking, engaging in creativity and fun.
Every day, associates own this vision by contributing their unique skills and talents in an environment where they feel heard. Their contribution reaches past the office walls. Everywhere they go associates become Coca-Cola ambassadors, representing the brand in their neighbourhoods and communities all over the world in an effort to “Be the brand”.
With a ‘Bottom-Up” mentality, Coca-Cola engages their associates in an open discussion allowing ideas to be heard and put into action. This creates a feeling of ownership, engagement and ultimately drives productivity. “Start-up You” is a 3 day activation session where associates take time away from regular day-to-day workload to explore and share free thinking. They walk away feeling refreshed, rejuvenated, supported, heard and ready to put their ideas and their co-worker’s ideas into action.
Coca-Cola Journey was launched in 2012 and is the company’s digital magazine, and online story telling platform. This social media powered hub includes Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flicker, Instagram & Google+.
In a company with over 700,000 associates worldwide, it would be easy for employees to feel lost, undervalued or overlooked. Coca-Cola embraces individuals with #outofoffice, an online post celebrating their life outside of work. Coca-Cola Journey has a blog titled ‘Unbottled’ featuring an #out-of-office monthly series highlighting many of their employees that have agreed to share what makes them happy when they’re away from the desk. The Coca-Cola Europe team started the series and shared the stories internally. One story was sent to the Journey Team and they wanted to share it with the world. Stories are inspiring, fun and though provoking.
Coca-cola also offers a learning program for associates through Coca-Cola University.
http://promotion1.com/blog/emory-the-coca-cola-university/
“Using the Peak Performance System, our performance management and development system, in tandem with more than 100 global people development forums, associates and their managers regularly discuss development, movement and succession plans around the world.
Lessons for others:
- Let employees voices be heard and allow them to implement their ideas.
- Celebrate employees and their accomplishments outside of the office.
- Reward people for taking risks and finding better ways to solve problems.
Submitted By: Lisa Fodor & Katelyn Wilson
To contact the author of this entry please email at: lfodor@uoguelph.ca OR katelyntina@gmail.com
If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Programme Director, Social Media for Business Performance.