Key Challenges in Attracting and Retaining a Workforce in Coca-Cola Company

This article discusses the challenges faced by Coca-Cola Company in attracting and retaining a qualified workforce. The challenges include lack of strong leadership, demographic changes, competition from other companies, raising standards of qualification, the warm body syndrome, finding qualified applicants, high rates of turnover among employees, and increase in operational costs.

Running Head: KEY CHALLENGES IN ATTRACTING AND RETAINING A WORKFORCE
IN COCA-COLA 1
Key Challenges in Attracting and Retaining a Workforce in Coca-Cola Company
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KEY CHALLENGES IN ATTRACTING AND RETAINING A WORKFORCE IN COCA-
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Introduction
One of the most significant employer branding challenges facing more meaningful and
more established brands is making themselves relevant for prospective millennial employees.
These employees in most cases might otherwise seek different opportunities with smaller
startups or more entrepreneurial ventures and then retaining them once they are on board. Most
employees within companies tend to be enticed by new employment opportunities if they do not
feel rewarded or appreciated or in the vent that they do not believe there are avenues for
advancements at their modern corporation (Mubayi, 2012). Such perceptions make management
of most companies around the competitive markets to have a challenge in retaining such
employees that have made up their minds to look for new venture. It is clear that responsibilities
of the department of human resource in every operation of an organization are to deal with
operations such as conducting job analyses, planning for job labor and recruit different
candidates. It also remains responsible for training and orientation of new employees,
performance appraisal, management of employees’ wages and salaries, offering incentive along
with benefits, as well as communicates efficiently with management and employees at any
moment. Amid this myriads of responsibility, they must HR department are still facing extreme
challenges (Foster & Barnetson, 2017). The major problem that faces them remains to be how
they can attract and retain the workforce. Therefore, principal target of this research paperwork is
to explore critical challenges in drawing together with keeping the workforce in Coca-Cola
Company.

KEY CHALLENGES IN ATTRACTING AND RETAINING A WORKFORCE IN COCA-
COLA COMPANY 3
Critical challenges in attracting together with retaining the workforce in Coca-Cola
Company
One of the most vital challenge that operation of Coca-Cola Company faces is the
attracting or recruitment and retention of qualified personnel that supports its operations. While
the problem of attracting different talent into operations of Coca-Cola Company is not original,
preface, as well as hasty development of advanced technology along with use of web globally,
has made setback to reach disaster scope (Sidorick, 2016). For instance, shifting to broader-based
training along with advanced skills has resulted in changing the expectations of workforce in the
company. Workers are presently increasing to be less satisfied while they remain within the
single work-related regulation as they have harmonized the elasticity and liveliness of their
managers.
Lack of strong leadership in different branches
Having great employees crave great leadership, and weak employees lead to vice versa.
In most cases, workers are always unsatisfied when some leaders does not support employee,
empower in the process of making decision, and inspire creativity and excellent outcomes in
operations. Therefore, having only few leaders who are active in managing welfare employees
make it tough for the company to attract and retain required number of workforce (Boehm,
Cordier, Thomas, Tanner, & Salata, 2017). In most cases, rates of employees turnover in Coca-
Cola Company results because the present leaders fail to focus on the professional development
of their workers making them to earn low marks. Besides, other leaders are not always ready to
help employees feel secure by failing to enable better communication and feedback along with

KEY CHALLENGES IN ATTRACTING AND RETAINING A WORKFORCE IN COCA-
COLA COMPANY 4
productivity gains. With weak leadership in place, Coca-Cola Company still faces challenge of
attracting and retaining workforce as their top talent is just excited to demonstrate leadership.
Lack of visible feedback from leaders and their recognition efforts make the idea of drawing to
talented employees to be tough. Therefore, Coca-Cola Company needs to focus on the design of
having active and strong leadership to support operations of different branches that have defined
mission and purpose that can help in attracting and retaining workforce (Ai-jen & Whitlatch,
2016). Robust and effective administration of the company needs to be communicated through
the departments of organization in order for workforce to understand and buy-in to the purpose
they each perform in delivering the organizational mission.
Demographic changes
The remote, as well as non-remote population movements in different places, has made it
tough for the Coca-Cola Company to able capable of retaining its skilled employees. The
changes in demographic setting have made it tough for the operations of the company to attract
workforce as most people who are experienced are always nowhere to be recruited (Lo &
Teixeira, 2015). The challenge of attracting as well as retaining workforce in remote areas where
the Coca-Cola Company establishes its operations has been intensified over the past three
decades with shifts towards the market-led allocation of different resources along with
government policies. These policies have always been on the front head ion encouraging
rationalization of services along with devolution of services to both regional and city centers.
The emergence of new generation of workers due to such changes in population present the
entirely new set of challenges as HR department are always unable to support wages that many

KEY CHALLENGES IN ATTRACTING AND RETAINING A WORKFORCE IN COCA-
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people request in relation to other companies that operate in the same area (Basso & Puittman,
2017). The inability to provide the requested pay as per the workforce make it tough for the
management of Coca-Cola Company to retain their experienced employees who further seek
other engagements in different sectors.
Competition from other companies
One of the most significant challenges in process of retaining or attracting workforce that
Coca-Cola Company faces is competing with large organizations that fight for the few top talents
around market. Such problems arise in operations of Coca-Cola Company since other business
with big name brands that deals with non-alcoholic beverages typically offer better benefits
packages (Susman, 2010). These companies always provide higher salaries and other operational
benefits than Coca-Cola Company making it tough for the management to retain its workers that
resign to go and seek employment in those companies. The competition imposed to operations of
Coca-Cola Company has made the administration to focus on improving their services by
improving their wages, but they have been unable to reach some of well-established corporation
making it tough for it to attract skilled and talented workforce during process of recruitment. In
most cases, Coca-Cola Company lacks the required number of qualified employees to fill in the
advertised positions as most of these workforces are always taken away once they complete them
training and educations in different learning centers. There is still the need for the management
of Coca-Cola Company to understand if their company is much less bureaucratic than other large
organizations with thousands of workforces (Christopher, 2015). The idea can allow the

KEY CHALLENGES IN ATTRACTING AND RETAINING A WORKFORCE IN COCA-
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company to work more quickly as well as more effective in ensuring that the company is able to
attract and retain their workforce.
Raising standards of qualification
The idea of raising standards during recruitment process makes it tough for the company
to attract people around the society as most people always fail to have one or two qualification
elements as per the listing in their advertisement posts. There is nothing that has been more
frustrating in operations of Coca-Cola Company in the process of that deals with attraction and
retention of workforce like lack of qualified applicants during recruitment and having
unqualified people in operations (Azman, Sirat, & Pang, 2016). During hiring process after
company finds it hard to attract huge number of applicants as it set high qualifications for every
individual who seeks employment. Additionally, when HR department of Coca-Cola Company
raises qualifications that every individual in its operations need to have made it tough for some
employees that have been serving the company for long to be retained. The old employees in the
company remain to be those that have been in operations for extended time leading to lack of
some necessary skills that the current employees have because of ever-increasing changes in
technology used to support and improve services of Coca-Cola Company. However, lack of
adequate capital by the company to support different employees within its operations to develop
their standards makes it tough for the present workforce to use their funds to attain such skills
they require within the stipulated period (Wilder, 2015). Therefore, failure of most employees to
seek such skills and standards make the company to have no other approach of retaining them
but only to part ways making this to be key challenges that it faces on maintaining workforce.

KEY CHALLENGES IN ATTRACTING AND RETAINING A WORKFORCE IN COCA-
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Coca-Cola Company needs to involve in the process of networking as a way of solving these
issues of attracting and retaining workforce.
The warm body syndrome
Coca-Cola Company faces difficulties to open their operations in new regions globally
when they focus on expanding their businesses. During the moment of establishing new services
in new markets, they are often faced with “the warm body syndrome.” Here, instead of the
company focusing on hiring people that fit their operations and are qualified for particular
positions, workforce is brought in just because they are convenient and cost-effective. The issue
does not seem to e a significant concern when the company starts its operations (Mullei et al.,
2010). However, down the road of services, most of these warm bodies end up drawing down the
business of Coca-Cola Company more than providing the return. As the people that had attained
employment are always having less skills, it make management of Coca-Cola Company to fire
some who underperform during their operations leading to challenge of retaining these
employees. In most cases, just like any bad habit in operations of Coca-Cola Company, the warm
body syndrome remains to be hard to break. During attracting and retaining workforce, Coca-
Cola Company is forced to have the key factor of creating the new pattern for hiring that focuses
on value rather than time constraints (Fraser, Hall, Michel, Paisley-Smith, & Whitted, 2017).
There is a need to create the detailed description of job through the analysis of job to be crucial.
The company has to create a detailed job description through the analysis of hob that is crucial as
a way of dealing with challenge of attracting and retaining workforce.
Finding qualified applicants

KEY CHALLENGES IN ATTRACTING AND RETAINING A WORKFORCE IN COCA-
COLA COMPANY 8
In operations of Coca-Cola Company, there is nothing that remains to be more frustrating
than publicizing the job opening as well as attaining and retaining dozens of unqualified
applicants and workers that waste time of managers. In some cases, Coca-Cola Company fails to
have appropriate amount of money or financial means to hire the recruiters and retaining
qualified employees who have decided to resign from their operations, and this always presents
the very real challenge on operations (Bhogal, 2018). The lack of appropriate network to check
nonqualified employees make it tough to attract and retain qualified applicants as most people
tend to take bribes during the recruitment process making the process of attracting workforce to
be bias. The management can also decide to have personal differences with workforce making
qualified workforce to be unable to continue with their engagement in the company as they
decide to look for new ventures in other employment sectors away from Coca-Cola Company.
The new pattern that company uses for hiring that does not focus on value rather than time
constraint makes it tough to have efficient approach of retaining and attracting workforce
(Ensley, 2017). Therefore, there is always the need for the management of Coca-Cola Company
to control negative impacts that result from finding qualified applicants. The management needs
to offer rewards for employee referrals as a way of helping in attracting and retaining qualified
workforce that helps in improving their operations.
High rates of turnover among employees
The desire by most people employed to support operations of Coca-Cola Company that
decides to leave their jobs for various issues voluntarily has remained to be a significant
challenge for operations of the company in retaining and attracting workforce. These employees

KEY CHALLENGES IN ATTRACTING AND RETAINING A WORKFORCE IN COCA-
COLA COMPANY 9
always decide to leave for various reasons such as health complications, need to advance their
education, start their business operations, and family issues make company to be in constant
activities of recruiting other employees (Bremmer, 2013). The termination of operations by
several employees occasionally make it difficult for Coca-Cola Company to attract employees by
the time they leave without giving the management notice of their plan in advance. Cases of
turnover also make it difficult for the management of Coca-Cola Company to retain their
employs because once these employees decide to terminate their associations with organizations,
management finds it nearly impossible to meet these workforce and convince them to stay in
operations (Dingle, Fraser, & Wilder, 2016). The incidences of increase in cases of turnover
among employees make it hard for the company to plan for more ways of improving how to
retain their employees as they lack people that can show them what needs to be improved.
Increase in operational costs
The increase in operational costs of Coca-Cola Company makes it difficult for the
management to support activities of attracting more workforces as well as retaining the
workforce in its operations. The increase in operational cost always makes management of Coca-
Cola Company to fire some underperforming employees due to decline in the revenue due to
high operational costs (de Chaves, Valeria, Reuther, & Fernandes, 2017). In some cases,
management faces difficulties in retaining employees by firing some employees or forcing some
employees to retire early as they cannot be able to continue with operations of production,
distribution, and supply of different non-alcoholic soft drinks in the global community. Besides,
Coca-Cola Company finding it challenging at the moment when they incur increase operational

KEY CHALLENGES IN ATTRACTING AND RETAINING A WORKFORCE IN COCA-
COLA COMPANY 10
charges when they seek to attract workforce (Cosgrave, Hussain, & Maple, 2015). High
operational costs make it tough for the company to be able to support high wages of managers
and this makes it hard for the company to retain these employees that are earning huge salaries.
Job incentive
Compensations, benefits earned, along with working environment in different operations
remains to be the significant factors in process of attracting and retaining employees of Coca
Cola Company. In hard economic times, Coca-Cola Company always cut back benefits to its
employees leading to difficulties in attracting new employees as most employees decide to resign
and leave its operations leading to challenging in retaining a workforce (Judd, Dorozenko, &
Breen, 2017). The cut back of benefits also makes it much more difficult to attract the best
candidate for every operational post leading to adverse impact on output of Coca-Cola Company.
In conclusion, HR departments of Coca-Cola Company always have to attain creative strategies
that they set in making their job positions or job listings to be more appealing that can then help
in attracting as well as retaining the workforce necessary for their operations and wellbeing.

KEY CHALLENGES IN ATTRACTING AND RETAINING A WORKFORCE IN COCA-
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