How can a large global company like Coca-Cola manage its human resources efficiently? The example of the US divisions

Résumé du document

Coca-Cola is one of the most famous and successful brands all over the world. The Coca-Cola Company is a large multinational enterprise, operating in about 200 countries. This can be considered as the quintessential global corporation. We could more likely use the terms "multi-local" company as operations differ from one country to another. The company presents its main brand with a "local face" in every country where it is sold, which can be simply summarized in the famous marketing philosophy "think globally, act locally". Human Resource Management is a strategic function in an international organization. In the case of the Coca-Cola Company, HRM is different in every country where the company does business. The global firm has a philosophy of a free local management. As I will not be able to study the HRM practices in all the countries where Coca-Cola is established, I decided to focus on the HRM policy in its home country, the United-States. We will critically go through the main elements of the HRM strategy as it is in the US.

Extraits

[...] The performance of every employee is annually evaluated and, as already discussed in this paper, gets some increase in payment or promotion if the evaluation is positive. Coca-Cola has a planned promotion. It means that every employee is aware about the possibility of career evolution that he can make or expect at the beginning of the year. It is an interesting notion as HRM usually focuses on new or temporary employees and does not have much influence on career development. It rather depends on the supervisors of each department. However, there are some problems with such system of internal referencing in the process of career development. [...]

[...] In the nearest future, Coca-Cola will have to make several adjustments if it wants to avoid employees' dissatisfaction about the evaluation they receive. First of all, evaluation criteria need to be more objective and quantifiable. For instance, instead of grading communication skill with the single rating, more questions can be asked: how much time of the working day employee has to communicate with others (in percents), does employees need to prepare oral reports and speeches, does he need profound communication skills to complete the job on the "excellent" level? [...]

[...] How can a large global company like Coca-Cola manage its human resources efficiently? The example of the US divisions Introduction Coca-Cola is one of the most famous and successful brands all over the world. The Coca-Cola Company is a large multinational enterprise, operating in about 200 countries. This can be considered as the quintessential global corporation. We could more likely use the terms "multi-local" company as operations differ from one country to another. The company presents its main brand with a "local face" in every country where it is sold, which can be simply summarized in the famous marketing philosophy "think globally, act locally". [...]

[...] There should be a better compromise between the managers and the HRM. The Succession Planning The succession planning is almost the same as career development. However, there are some differences: career development is possible even if there are no openings, while succession planning occurs only when the direct supervisor leaves creating the opening. Coca-Cola has its own system of succession planning which is not unique but still specific. Similarly to the career development, the targeted selection is used to fill existing positions. [...]

[...] Compensation Coca-Cola Company determines the compensation of its employees (salaries, rises, stock options, awards and bonuses) based on a variety of factors. Those factors include employee's pay grade, the employee's position within the salary range of the particular grade, and, as discussed above, the score obtained on the annual performance evaluation. Under this system, supervisors and managers are given ranges and targets which correspond to these factors. Grading system The current Coca-Cola's compensation system is effective since 1996. It has broad and overlapping salary ranges allowing big payment disparities. [...]