Experience Working at Coca-Cola Amatil, Australia - Case Study Example

TITLE by Name of author Name of class Name of Professor Name of school Location of school Date Executive summary This report outlines my experience working at Coca Cola Amatil, Australia. I had a short six month stint and the experience got was invaluable. Generally, the experience was great but I was able to note a few issues that I think the organisation’s management can work on to make the company the destination of choice for any potential employee. I noticed that there were supervision issues, too many approval levels in the organisation, relative lack of talent management and less empowered and a good number of demotivated employees. As the report will show, possible cause for these issues could be the political leadership of the organisation, focusing more on the bottom-line and less on employees and the lack of proper talent management plan. To solve these issues, solutions provided must meet criteria which include time, alignment with organisational goals, vision and mission as well as values. A possible six alternative solutions are mentioned in the report and it is recommended that the organisation choose three that meet all the decision criteria and implement them as soon as possible. It should be note that if these recommendations are implemented, Coca Cola Amatil will reach its goals and mission as well as keep a sustainable business. Introduction Working for any one of the many international organisations is every student’s dream. I got a chance of working with Coca Cola Amatil Limited for six months and I must admit that, generally, I loved the experience there. Coca Cola Amatil is an Australian bottling company where The Coca Cola Company has 29% ownership (Isdell & Beasley 2012). The Coca Cola Company is an international organisation specializing in soft drink production. The company has offices and processing plants around the world in over 200 countries. It specializes in production of soft drinks as well as the acquisition of small scale soft drink companies. Coca Cola Amatil is arguably one of the largest bottling companies in the Asian region (Isdell & Beasley 2012). Coca cola Amatil employees has between 1000-5000 employees across its various departments which include customer service, Finance, Human Resource Management, IT&T, Supply Chain and Sales and Marketing (Isdell & Beasley 2012). I got the chance of working in the Human Resources Department during my internship with Coca Cola Amatil. Before I began working, I underwent an orientation session in the Human Resource Department so as to get a clear understanding of how the department operated. This was meant to ensure that once I got started, I would find it easy going about my designated duties. After the orientation session which lasted a whole day, my official working days began. A mentor was assigned to me as would be expected of any intern. Statement of the Problem After a short while, I was well placed to carry out many of the duties within the organisation and once I displayed this, my mentor stopped following up what I was doing. This was rather strange because my idea of a mentor is that he/she is supposed to follow up what an intern was doing all through the internship process. Maybe this happened to me alone but I just wondered what would happen if a majority of supervisors in the organisation just left their juniors to do whatever they did and followed up later, probably when a mistake had been made and it was too late (Cascio 2006). Although I was a temporary employee at Coca Cola Amatil, I think that my mentor should have stayed with me throughout the whole process. This created a sense of lack of proper supervision in the department. As I continued to work at CC Amatil, I did notice that almost everything in the organisation, from departmental decision making to floating of ideas, were all too process oriented. Whatever simple decision that could be immediately made by respective departmental heads, a process had to be initiated that involved every managerial stage of the organisation and approval had to come from top management. It is ok to let the top management know of possible decisions made at the departmental level but the long process of actively involving it even in simple matters reduces efficiency of the organisation as a whole (Daft 2014, p. 197). This in the end makes the wheels of the organisation turn slowly given the huge size of the company itself. During the six months that I worked at Coca Cola Amatil, I came to realize that expectations placed on most talented employees were very high. They were expected to come up with solutions to problems within the shortest amounts of time. This, I was made to understand, put a strain on these employees and as a result were the employees whose turnover rate was higher compared to other groups of employees. I managed to study the managerial persons in the various departments and what I came up with was surprising. Not a single one of the talented employees was at a managerial position. This says a lot about the development of talent at CC Amatil and explains why there is such a huge turnover of talented employees in the organization. Empowering of employees was also another issue that I encountered at CCAmatil. The top management has managed driven the company towards greatness and making it a company that is closer to its consumers. Although this may have a positive impact on the financial health of the company, employees including me experience redundancies. Many of the employees also become disengaged by this culture as a result of being overworked just to reach organisational goals that would see company get a positive feedback from consumers. This however is at the expense of employees who should be considered assets rather than just a resource. Causes All these issues are with causes attached to them and one is that the company’s top management is so concerned about the bottom line and in pleasing shareholders that they have, to an extent, forgotten to engage the company’s employees. By not engaging with employees, management fails to empathize with them whenever they have issues, personal or work related. The morale and motivation thus runs down and this consequently leads to the development of robot like employees (Harter, Schmidt, Asplund, Killham, Agrawal 2010, p. 382). It has been shown that employees of any organisation perform to their best if they feel closer to all line managers as well as the executive. They are not just a means to an end, they are the end themselves and should not be ignored in any way, irrespective of the size of the organisation. The lack of proper talent management plan for the talented employees would be a good cause for their high turnover rate. Proper talent management plans for multinational organisations is a must if the company is to compete effectively in the industry (Briscoe, Schuler, Tarique 2012). The lack of promotion of the most talented employees and appropriate recognition could explain why most of them leave the company after working for a short while. With all this happening, I correctly guessed that there was no laid down plan for these employees’ career path despite the fact that the organisation’s expectations of them was so high. Any employee, who knows his/her worth in an organisation and feels that he/she is not appreciated enough, will most definitely leave for a better working environment. The leadership environment at CC Amatil is more of a political minefield and decision making take a more political approach. The highly hierarchical environment has been the cause of the long process oriented nature of operations in the organisation. With so many senior managers and very few leaders, approval levels increase a great deal making decision making a very long process that must include the top management as a result of their political nature. Also a lot of time is spent on maintaining this managerial alignment, time that could be well spent on empowering employees. This rather political environment comes with a sense of ‘old school’ fear as a motivator with managers having low emotional intelligence. Decision Criteria In order for CC Amatil to take care of these issues, the organisation will have to come up with solutions that will correct these issues for the company to perform even better and have happy and motivated employees as well. Certain decision criteria will thus help the organisation reach at solutions that best fit its way of operation (Heinecke 2011, p. 79). First of all, the chosen solution alternatives will have to be cost effective so that they do not lay stress on the financial health of the organisation. Also, these alternatives will have to adhere to the company’s values, goals, mission and vision as well as its objectives. Time I also a decision criteria that will have to be relied upon. Given that that time is of the essence in this competitive soft drink industry, smooth implementation of the chosen possible solutions among the alternatives will have to be done within a period of less than six months. It would also be important these alternatives that will be recommended be within human rights as well as work place rights of employees. Having respect for human rights and protecting employee workplace rights is part of CC Amatil’s culture which is important for sustainable business for the company. Alternative Solutions One possible solution that would fix the high turnover rate of talented employees would be to engage the HR department to come up with a well thought talent management plan that would ensure talented employees are well taken care of so that they do not leave the company. Another alternative to solving this issue would be to promote talented employees based on their work output as well as their innovativeness. On the issue of process oriented operations, one way of solving this would be to develop a structure that puts trust on departmental managers to make important departmental decisions without having to involve top management. These decisions would then be reviewed after a specific period of time. Alternatively, the company management could choose to reduce the number of line managers so that approval levels are reduced and consequently time is saved. When it comes to the issue of employee empowerment, CC Amatil management should impose the culture of focusing more on its people the same way it focuses on the shareholders and the company’s bottom-line. They could alternatively engage the HR department to design a plan that would ensure all employees undergo various training aligned to their respective areas of expertise. This would empower them a great deal and each would be trusted to make sound decisions that would benefit the company as a whole. Recommended Solutions To keep talented employees in the company, I would recommend that CC Amatil engage the HR department to develop a plan that would manage talented employees effectively by encouraging them to be creative and innovative. This choice is more time realistic as well as being in line with the values and goals of the organisation. This is in contrast to the simple promotion of these employees as it would not be holistic in nature. Many approval levels that are process oriented can be eliminated if the company chooses to structure its management structure in such a way that it puts trust in its line managers. This will allow them to make certain departmental decisions without having to necessarily involve top management. This will reduce the political environment and the highly hierarchical work environment. It will also ensure that there is improved and effective communication between top managers and line managers (Summers & Smith 2006, p. 52). The possibility of doing this within six months is high coupled with the fact that it is in line with the company’s vision and mission. Last but not least, the company should practice the culture of focusing more on its employees the same way it puts focus on its shareholders and financial health. It is the same employees who work toward making shareholders and top management happy by ensuring the company’s bottom-line is healthy and as such, they should be appreciated. Balancing this focus on employees and shareholders is achievable within six months compared to taking them all for training. An empowered, comfortable and appreciated staff will always perform better than if they were not empowered, uncomfortable and unappreciated. Conclusion All in all, CCAmatil is a great company to work for. It is a really welcoming environment with friendly employees and an atmosphere that is relaxed. The communication from low level staff to high executive board members will be that of one team rather than seen as an employee-employer relationship. If the recommendations discussed above are all implemented, then Coca Cola Amatil will be every potential employee’s work place wish. References Isdell, E. N., & Beasley, D. (2012). Inside Coca-Cola: a CEO's life story of building the world's most popular brand. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin. Summers, J. & Smith, B. (2006). Communication Skills Handbook, 2nd ed. Queensland: Wiley. Cascio, W. (2006). ‘The Economic Impact of Employee Behaviors on Organizational Performance’, California Management Review, Vol. 48, No. 4, pp. 41-59 Daft, R. (2014). The Leadership Experience. Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning. Harter, K. J, Schmidt, L. F, Asplund, W. J, Killham, A. E, Agrawal, S. (2010). ‘Causal Impact of Employee Work Perceptions on the Bottom Line of Organizations’, Perspectives on Psychological Science, Vol. 5, No. 4, pp. 378-389 Briscoe, D, Schuler, R, Tarique, I. (2012). International Human Resource Management: Policies and Practices for multinational enterprises. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis. Heinecke, P. (2011). Success factors of regional strategies for multinational corporations appropriate degrees of management autonomy and product adaptation. New York: Physica-Verlag. Read More