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Given paper will provide a description of the Coca-Cola Company, which operates in the soft drinks industry and the incentive plan employed by the company to motivate its employees and ensure their retention. In addition, this paper will highlight the right method for performance appraisal to be used with the incentive plan discussed.
Company Profile
The chosen company for this study is the Coca-Cola Company. The company was founded in 1886 (The Coca-Cola Company, 2015). Over the years of maintaining its brand, Coca-Cola has become the leading manufacturer, marketer and distributor of soft drinks and syrups. The company produces over 300 different beverage brands (The Coca-Cola Company, 2015). Company’s headquarters are located in Atlanta, Georgia, with its operations spread across 200 countries globally.
The Coca-Cola Company has been considered an organization because it contains a structure, corporate culture and policies that can become dysfunctional in a challenging business environment due to the lack of caution (The Coca-Cola Company, 2015). The key to successful implementation of new strategies in the company is their alignment with the organizational culture that can be hard to change, unlike the policies and structure (The Coca-Cola Company, 2015). Company’s best selling product is Coke, a carbonated drink consumed by many people throughout the world. Pemberton invented Coke in the nineteenth century. Company has employed a unique marketing strategy that has made the drink dominant on the world’s beverage market (The Coca-Cola Company, 2015).
Company’s mission is to assert the position of the Coca-Cola Company. Through its products company aims to refresh the world and instigate a touch of cheerfulness and happiness. The primary objective is to create a value and make a difference worldwide (The Coca-Cola Company, 2015).
The Coca-Cola Company operates in the soft drink industry. Company has the largest share of the market and is present in almost every part of the world. The soft drink industry emerged many years ago. Today, this industry is extensive and it operates based on creativity and innovation (The Coca-Cola Company, 2015). For example, the United States of America have over 500 bottlers and about 183,000 employees. Company’s major competitor is the PepsiCo Inc. (The Coca-Cola Company, 2015).
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The Coca-Cola Company has been using an incentive plan to motivate its employees. Company values its employees, which gives them an opportunity to grow professionally and achieve more (The Coca-Cola Company, 2015). Coca-Cola offers various development programs to motivate and encourage its employees’ performance (The Coca Cola-Company, 2015). The peak performance provides continual opportunities to reward employees. Instructors and managers offer teaching opportunities while the functional developments allow employees to build job skills in their area of interest. Besides, the company has an online university that serves as a training environment for its employees. During the training, employees are given short-term assignments whereby they are allowed to work in a different field, department or country.
Incentive Plan
Training and mentoring incentives for motivating employees are not new phenomena. Most companies view incentives as indispensable if the organizational goals and employees’ needs must be met (Project Management Institute, 2014). Numerous researches report that training and mentoring used to enhance growth and development are the most important factors driving job satisfaction in the market today (Project Management Institute, 2014).
Training and mentoring are the parts of an ongoing process that focuses on projected needs and objectives of a company to ensure it remains productive and creative (Project Management Institute, 2014). The incentive plan is highly motivational resulting in individual growth. According to studies, individual growth provides employees with opportunities to attain self-fulfillment and gratification. Besides, the plan focuses on increasing employees’ strengths and creating new talents. Such individual development motivates employees in a personal matter and enhances their job performance (Project Management Institute, 2014).
Training ensures the productivity of employees through restructuring. This applies to both new and old employees. Research indicates that continuous learning is an important employee motivator (Project Management Institute, 2014). The Coca-Cola Company has largely invested in its employees to increase their engagement and commitment. Besides offering hands-on training to the employees, company also provides leadership training. Evidently, many managers have not had an opportunity to lead under the challenging circumstances hence they need training on how to motivate, coach and reward their employees. Leaders need to empower and engage their employees to develop innovative solutions and remain focused at work in order to ensure organizational success.
Training and mentoring stimulate employee motivation from different perspectives. For example, the process entails challenging assignments that create lasting friendship between the company and its employees. As a result, employees feel appreciated by the company as it is willing to invest in their growth. Through training employees acquire knowledge of the latest trends in the industry and experience cognitive rejuvenation. For the Coca-Cola Company, the training and mentoring initiative has positively influenced the opportunities for employees’ career attainment and thus, improved their job performance.
Additionally, training and mentoring provide employees with a greater exposure and visibility in an organization. In turn, this increases their career satisfaction. For example, the process helps them determine which of their skills are demanded in the market. As a result, they are stimulated and encouraged to perform better.
Incentive plan provides support to the employees who are empowered to work independently in terms of job confidence. The training and mentoring program at the Coca-Cola Company has created a sense of teamwork, which increased the morale of employees.
The training and mentoring incentive plan relates to the acquired needs theory of motivation. The needs theory states that employees are motivated by three needs and each one is stronger than the previous one. Further, the theory states that all employees seek personal achievement and acceptance. Training and mentoring provide employees with development, which stimulates them to work hard to receive recognition and move into higher-ranking leadership positions hence fulfilling their ambitions.
Compensation Plan
A well-aligned compensation plan includes a performance management system. This system ensures that employees achieve corporate objectives as well as their regular assessment. Training and mentoring support this system because they communicate and constantly remind employees that they have to fulfill organization’s mission and vision as well as meet the objectives.
Training and mentoring are continuous processes that apply to both new and existing employees. Compensation plan is important as it shapes the thinking of employees and leads to improved job performance. New employees are trained and mentored to be familiarized with the mission, vision and objectives of an organization. It very important to ensure that their efforts in an organization are geared toward the same goals. On the other hand, existing employees are trained to remind and enhance their knowledge of the mission and objectives of an organization (Kumar, 2010).
Human Resource Management
As noted above, employee development through training and mentoring results in job confidence and ambition to be the best to receive promotional benefits. As such, employees are more engaged in their work since they have a target to achieve, which requires less supervision. However, when supervision is needed the mentor or the trainer acts as the supervisor to monitor employees and their performance.
Additionally, using training and mentoring as development programs results in job satisfaction and fulfillment. According to studies, employees who are satisfied with their jobs are less likely to leave their positions (Project Management Institute, 2014). Besides, employee development facilitates further growth and lower turnover rate.
Employee recruitment helps company select appropriate candidates for job openings (Kumar, 2010). Training and mentoring are very important aspects in terms of employees’ skills development to help reach full potential as well as achieve objectives. Learning provides a significant contribution to personal development. Training and mentoring helps the recruited employees feel comfortable with the new job.
Performance Appraisal
Performance appraisal includes the evaluation of employee performance in a systematic way. According to experts, it is a form of developmental tool used for the complete development of an organization and employee (Kumar, 2010). Employee performance is measured against such factors as quantity and quality of output, supervision, job knowledge, leadership abilities, versatility, initiative, dependability, health and co-operation. Evaluation should include both the past and potential performance.
From a personal perspective, the best performance appraisal for the training and mentoring incentive plan is a paired-comparison ranking. In this case, employees are compared with others in the group and ranked as either superior or weaker. Afterwards, each employee is ranked based on the scores achieved. I chose this performance appraisal format because during the training and mentoring sessions employees receive challenging tasks. Supervisor can monitor how these tasks are carried out to ensure success of the company and give scores to the employees based on their performance. Employees with the highest scores can be ranked as superior.
Conclusion
The Coca-Cola Company was founded in 1886. Today, it is the world leading soft drinks company with operations across the globe. The Coca-Cola Company uses the training and mentoring incentive plan to motivate its employees. This incentive plan not only leads to improved job performance but also enhances employee retention, recruitment, supervision as well as organization’s compensation plan.
