Coke’s brand philosophy is ‘open happiness’ and it believes in carrying the same message for its employees. At its consolidated contact centre in Charlotte, North Carolina, it has come up with a novel way to keep employees engaged, to provide them opportunities to share their knowledge and also improve their own well-being.
The Company has set up five teams to engage its employees. Each team focuses on certain activities that have a positive effect on the staff.
Fun-at-work Team
This team works on the concept of open happiness. Its activities revolve around everything other than work — festivals, celebrations, birthdays, holidays and special days, such as the national donut day. Their activities pertain to local sports teams, such as the softball league competitions, and so on. In short, it connects the employees to stuffs that make them happy and give them relaxation; things that they will generally not think about at work.
The fun-at-work team indulges in activities pertaining to local sports teams, such as the softball league competitions
Live positively Team
This team indulges in activities related to the health and wellness of the employees. This team has everything to do with not just the physical health of the workers but also their diet. It also educates the employees on the ingredients that go into making the products offered by the Company and similar companies.
Stewardship Team
This team is dedicated to giving back, and highlights the fact that Coke Cares.
Safety Team
This team, as the name suggests, makes employees aware of ways to remain safe not just at home but also at work. It trains them to react appropriately in case of emergencies.
Learn and Lead Team
This fifth team is dedicated to the overall development of the employees, providing them knowledge of tasks beyond what they are used to performing daily. It helps them develop professionally.
For a beverage multinational such as Coca-Cola, which has over 700,000 associates across the world, it is important to ensure that employees do not ever feel lost, undervalued or bored. Like many other global companies, employee engagement is a top priority for this beverage company.
Employees who have got used to their work will no doubt start finding their tasks monotonous over a period of time. While they will still continue to do them out of a sense of duty and because it earns them their bread, as time passes, lesser and lesser of their heart will go into performing these routine tasks. That is where employee engagement programmes come in.
Workplaces where the staff witness a heavy workload, face challenging schedules and slog it out at a maddening pace of work, need to focus on employee engagement. It is essential for such work environments to be places that workers look forward to returning to every day.
The Company also has various other novel employee-engagement programmes in place.
Its blog called ‘Unbottled’ allows its employees to share their pleasant experiences outside of work. This practice was started by the Coca-Cola Europe team, which shared these posts internally. Soon, these tales from the heart became a rage.
The Company believes that employees’ voices should be heard, their ideas should be considered for implementation; their achievements should be acknowledged and celebrated, and their efforts should rewarded.
Going by its efforts, the Company surely knows how to move in the right direction.
