Talent Management in Coca-Cola - Case Study Example

Talent management procedures represent the current global direction of running successful businesses. This process is critical in linking the corporate strategy and the operational strategies of a business to achieve the general strategic plan of the organisation. The purpose of this essay is to highlight the importance of talent management as depicted in Coca Cola. Coca – Cola is a company that produces very popular drinks, it beverages with a particular flavor. The company retains its flavor from the secretive Coke seeds. Coca-Cola is not only popular in global sales of soft drinks, but also the worlds most fashionable drink brands. What’s more, it has a high market share. For the Coca-Cola Company, talent management is very essential. Effective reasonable talent management model could help the company gain greater advantage in the future market competition and make enterprising decisions with dynamism. Talent represents the total summation of an individual’s ability from inborn or acquired (Tansley 2007). The inborn talent is considered an essential gift, and the bearer of the talent can perform duties related to this talent based on instincts and inner knowledge. Acquired talent usually be gained through education, talents are nurtured into knowledge, experience, skills and intelligence (Armstrong&Taylor 2014). Bhatnagar (2007) proposed that talent management is a set of processes play an employee value. It means the aim of talent management is correct judgment and development of character that drives the talent holder to utilize this talent in several applicable manners. Talent management in Coca-Cola is a recipe that defines the company’s course of success. The company holds a healthy record of incorporating talent management in their operational system and budgets (Scott, 2008). Comparing to other soft drink companies globally; Coca Cola’s trend has helped create better financial performance for the company. Besides, the superior investment in human capital has enabled Coca-Cola to create a shareholder value that is almost twice the other companies, which involve average human capital investment (Baron & Armstrong, 2007). In addition, in Coca Cola, effective talent management builds integration and positive team spirit in the company’s workforce. That is the major reason behind the diverse management of various people from various cultures around the world. Coca Cola’s talent management strategy explains the type of talent that the company is scouting for, like creativity and innovative capability, and establishes the type of people in which the company will invest. This strategy further highlights the manner in which it will be done. The talent management strategy ensures that the company enjoys a competitive advantage over its rivals (Armstrong&Taylor 2014).Therefore; these individuals must have broader and deeper spectrums of skills that enable them to behave in a manner suggesting they are willing to maximize their contribution to the company. COKE, in terms of talent introduction, pays most attention on each loyalty to COKE brand (Coca-Cola journal 2014). Coca-Cola has a whole set of training systems. In addition to introduce talents need to love the brand, mainly in the lively mind, quality is key, such as elements of comprehensive and practical experience. In this way, introducing talents can fully absorb the essence of the Coca-Cola system, and its working experience as soon as possible into the application in practical work. Having made substantial progress in the process of absorption is the purposes of the Coca-Cola system introduce talents. The key components of the Coca Cola Talent management strategy are in attracting, selecting, retaining, engaging and developing talent. The attraction of talent at Coca Cola incorporates the focus on the external labour markets (Campbell and Hirsh, 2014). It means COKE uses the skill of external recruitments to attracting required talent. External recruitment involves attracting people form job centres, advertisements, recruitment agencies, manual recruiting and personal recommendation (Taylor 2008). In general, selecting talent and attracting be link together. The selection of talent involves the generation of the adequate pool of the applications considered as quality (Beardwell and Claydon, 2010). A typical example in Coca-cola China, each four years, the Coca-Cola Co. will hold a management trainee program. The aim is to attract talents who graduated from top universities and select the most excellent and required talents from these applicants. During recruitment, COKE uses a variety of methods to attract talents such as campus recruitment, social media and advertisements (Coca-Cola HR 2015). In this process, the company performs an online test, phone interviews and four rounds of face-to-face interviews to identify the required talents. Coca-Cola has been practicing strict and reasonable selection principles. These principles play a vital role in the development of the company. Every employee is a company that big of a small cell in the organism, the contribution of every employee will influence the development of the company in the future. By selecting the consistent with the companys business philosophy, excellent employees personal ability, will play a very large role in promoting the development of our company. According to the survey, during ‘War for talent’, there are more than 60 present employer care attraction of talent and retain of talent (Mancesti 2012). Beardwell and Claydon (2010) define retaining talent as reduce the senior personnel turnover rate and devote their maximize contribution to the company. Therefore, before retaining talent, employer needs to think about turnover. The common method for reducing turnover includes job enrichment, workspace characteristics, leader-member exchange, demographic diversity, and managing inter-role conflict (Taylor 2008). COKE is very much focused to ensure that each employee could enjoy his or her work life. The employer tries his or her best let each employee believe that working in COKE is a funny thing (Coca-cola journal 2015). Hence, they pay attention on comfortable workspace. In each COKE’s company, all employers provide a gym and a restaurant. In addition, there are some rest areas near a piece of work area and employee offer free COKE’s drinks and fruit. Therefore, COKE use this method improve talents well-being and retaining talents. Engaging talent involves the identification of people who are able to contribute more than the scope of achievements that the company has set (Beardwell and Claydon 2010). An example of talent engagement is the signing of contracts with popular music stars in the advertisement of the brand in the wake of major sporting events In organization, development is a process of differential learning to achieve the result which organization needs (Beardwell and Thompson 2014). According to CIPD (2012c: 13), respondents deemed coaching is the most effective method to develop people. In the aspect of management skills training, this is the continuing education of professionals to continuously. Different need has different types of training: first, it is a large training expansion, to change the talent intelligence structure and cultivating inter-disciplinary talent. Secondly, more new knowledge training, update skills system, which have made Coca-Cola system is always a leader of The Times. According to introducing, Coca-Cola has a skills training center, is used for technical training, coke production process, and the individual professional topic, lectures. In addition, the company also with a number of universities jointly organized a Coca-Colas school of management, specialized training senior management personnel, a lot of foreign information, management concept, and Coca-Cola case study are concentrated here. There is no corresponding training to gain the knowledge and skills needed for this position should have, cant be achieved good management (Tarique& Schuler, 2010). The implementation of the talent management in COKE involves the alignment of these processes to match the corporate strategy of the company. The Coca-Cola company is always will be integrated into the local market as a goal, only into the local market, understand the local consumer spending habits, consumption preference, taste habit can better win the market. It is said in the annual report 2010 that in the Coca-Cola Companys strategy of choosing and employing persons, the unique thing is "localization". Its essence is: set up the company in the local market, all employees with the local people. Unity is responsible for sales policy, personnel training by the corporation. The management framework of the company plays a critical role in talent management as the senior managers ensure support and the company’s commitment to fulfill the ambitions of the talent bearer. Department or line managers do not only identify the talent in the individual but also develop the talent to achieve the much-needed relevance to the company’s production. The specialists in human resource management are responsible with controlling and supervising the operations of the talent holder. The approach to the talent management that Coca Cola uses depends on the definition of the talent that is appropriate to the advantage of the company. The inclusive approach indicates that employees in all departments and levels in the workforce have a talent. This makes the organization a pool full of total talent. The exclusive approach on the other hand includes segregation of staff to exclude the high-value staff. The high-value staff is ranked based on high potential and performance (CIPD, 2014; Iles et al., 2010). The Coca Cola Company, adopts a hybrid approach towards talent management. The hybrid approach is evident in the Coca Cola event management where the employee branding is the same for both the team leaders and the team members. This approach envisages both the inclusive and exclusive approaches to talent management (Hirsh, 2000). In conclusion, the talent management strategies enable Coca Cola to have a competitive advantage over the other corporate players in the soft drink industry. In the five components of effective talent management strategies are the key contributors of successful acquisition and retention of employees with talent in Coca Cola. These components provide a stable environment for the organizational sustainability of the company, with the company registering profits in each market that it ventures in. The effectiveness of a talent management strategy is based on alignment of the strategy with the organizational goals. Various talents define the course of global and international trade and marketing. However, if these talents are not relevant to the company’s goals, they cannot be developed as required. Therefore, there is need to support the talent management strategies with an integrated Human Resource development method at the Coca Cola Company. The company must highlight the coherent and strategic orientation processes in the Human Resource Development that is flexible to the competitive market changes. Finally, Coca Cola defines the path of doing global business by taking into concern the needs of talent management. In addition to the designs that the company implements to fulfil the success of the talent management procedures, the company should incorporate more face-to-face contact between the top management and the employee fraternity. This is a way of making sure that the talent bearers have the feeling of security and concern form the management of the company. References Baron, A. and Armstrong, M. 2007. Human capital management. London: Kogan Page Ltd. Beardwell, J. and Claydon, T. 2010. Human resource management. Harlow, England: Financial Times/Prentice Hall. Campbell, V. and Hirsh, W. 2014. Talent management. Brighton: Institute for Employment Studies. Cannon, J. and McGee, R. 2007. Talent management and succession planning. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Duttagupta, R. 2005. Identifying and managing your assets: Talent management. London: PricewaterhouseCoopers. Hirsh, W. 2000. Succession planning demystified. Brighton: Institute of Manpower Studies. Scott, A. 2008. ‘Managers “don’t have the time to develop talent”’. People Management, 14(7). Tansley, C. 2007. Talent. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Read More