Leave Loudly Strategy: A Strategic HR Priority for Work-Life Balance and Talent Retention at PepsiCo

This essay discusses the Leave Loudly Strategy implemented by PepsiCo for work-life balance, talent retention, and diversity management. It outlines the strategic HR priorities, rationale for implementing the strategy, and alignment with other HR practices. It also explores how the strategy can improve workplace morale and productivity. The essay includes a discussion on the CEO's personal life and concludes with references.

Running head: STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Leave Loudly Strategy
Student’s name
Name of the Institute

STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................2
Analysis of Discussion Question............................................................................................................2
Outline of strategic HR priorities............................................................................................................. 2
Rationale of implementing the ‘leave loudly’ strategy......................................................................3
Alignment of PepsiCo’s ‘leave loudly’ strategy align with other HR Practices...........................4
CEO's personal life........................................................................................................................................ 5
How strategy can improve workplace morale and productivity....................................................6
Conclusion....................................................................................................................................................7
References....................................................................................................................................................9

STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Introduction
This essay talks about Leave Loudly Strategy that has been introduced and implemented
by PepsiCo into their work culture. It aims in enticing work-life balance, workforce balancing
and also to retain the best talent on their floor. This strategy states that top level management
should leave floor in such a way so that middle and lower level employees come to know about
the entry and exit of their supervisors and they could draw the aspects of their personal life
accordingly as Robbert suggest that an individual should perform well in their professional life
and as well as in personal life too. With this strategy they stressed on diversity, managing
working force, keeping balanced working life and also aid in sync between working and personal
life.
Analysis of Discussion Question
The various discussion questions of the case study can be discussed as:
Outline of strategic HR priorities
Human Resource is a vital department to align and entice employees’ activities. With the
help of leave loudly strategy, Human Resource department is enabled to strategize the various
aspects like work life balance, talent retention, decreasing employee turnover, promote diversity
and to mention a few. With this strategy HR mainly focused on work life balance as they said
that it is not mandatory to proxy working hours in order to showcase commitment. Instead of
this, deliver quality work and promote flexi-time working schedule (Beer, 2015). This helps in
maintaining balance between professional and personal life. After that, talent retention comes
into the spotlight of HR strategic changes list. Leave loudly strategy helps in imparting work

STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
satisfaction to the employees as it aids in balancing work and personal life pressure. So it gives
an open door of balancing things and this lead to reduce the employee turnover ratio. Moreover
this strategy helps in making sure that no middle or lower level employee should be burdened by
their supervisors. Another important aspect to give priority is pooling diversity on floor. As we
all know that every culture has their own rituals and protocols and employees are likely to work
where they feel that ambience of an organization is favorably inclined to their culture. This
strategy helped in retaining diversity in a way it is providing flexibility to working hours and also
focused on maintaining balance of employees’ personal life along with professional one. Next
important aspect that HR strategically prioritizes is Women Empowerment (Boxall, 2018). In
leave loudly strategy when supervisor leaves an organization for the day then it also gives liberty
to workers to manage their work accordingly and in addition to it this also provides an
opportunity to choose any one task out of tasks list and schedule working timings accordingly.
This helps women to balance their home duties with their work and also parental off aids in
handling maternity period (Srinivasan & Chandwani, 2014).
Importantly, HR focused on extra working hours loads as they strategically used strategy to
vanish this extra work load by implementing policy if not send any work mails post 9 pm unless
an emergency arrives. It brings out quality results instead of quantity results (Choung, Hwang &
Song, 2014).
Rationale of implementing the ‘leave loudly’ strategy
Leave Loudly strategy has core intent of providing maximum benefits to employees
without doing any compromise in the quality of work and in delivering results. Main aim is to
balancing work life and doing workforce planning. It also aids in retaining talent and helpful in
diversity management at the floor (Cascio, 2015). Robbert Rietbroek implemented this strategy

STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
in order to fill the gap that middle and lower level employees sense in their working life in
comparison with senior level management (Stuart, 2014). In this it has been mentioned that
whenever any supervisor leave for the day, he/she should leave loudly so that others could alter
their work schedule in order to balance and prioritize their work harmony. With the initiative of
choosing one of the important tasks and sketch work accordingly entice the aim of grooming
employee’s personal life with their work life so that employees could sense high satisfaction
which would result in high employee retention rate. Rationale of implementing leave loudly
strategy is to promote equity and diversity, to execute apt workforce planning, entice work life
balance and intent to highlight social responsibility (Choung, Hwang & Song, 2014).
Alignment of PepsiCo’s ‘leave loudly’ strategy align with other HR Practices
Leave loudly is introduced by PepsiCo and set it as an innovative practice in the
department of human resource. But as soon as it started to take a success path, various
comparisons have been made with other HR practices (Birchall, 2014).
Leave Loudly v/s Equity and Diversity –Leave loudly strategy is strategically aligned with
practices like equity and diversity. It promotes equity in between all levels as it clearly
mentioned that overtime is not a proxy to commitment for hard work (Albrecht, Bakker,
Gruman, Macey & Saks, 2015). Robbert intentionally ask supervisors to leave loudly so that
equal amount of liberty can be enjoyed by other employees also. Diversity management can also
be done by this strategy as it facilitates the freedom to balance work and personal life and people
with diverse background have diverse culture protocols and they can all be sync with this
strategy (Cascio, 2015).

STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Leave Loudly v/s Workforce planning and development – Workforce planning can be done very
well if anticipation of labor turnover is apt and lower the turnover rate, better the workforce
planning. With leave loudly strategy, employees feel more satisfaction in an organization and
also, they would be able to track their supervisors’ way of work and this help in the development
of their managerial skills (Boxall, 2018).
Leave Loudly v/s social responsibility –Every organization requires to fulfill their responsibility
towards their society and leave loudly strategy is helping firms in fulfilling their duties. It is a
medium of align diversified culture at the same level (Birchall, 2014). It has a major contribution
in imparting innovation for women empowerment schemes. Such kind of flexibility and working
arrangement makes women corporate life easier and this would result in more number of women
at leadership level (Gilman, 2016).
Leave Loudly v/s Work life balance –Work life balance is very amazingly maintained by the
help of this strategy as its core focus is only to promote the balancing between work and personal
life that’s why this strategy has more focus on work-life balance. The initiative of choosing any
personal task from priority list and implement it with the scheduling of work is the clear sign of
promoting work life balance. Also, whenever any supervisor leave, then employees can opt for
flexible timings to maintain their work life (Arunachalam & Palanichamy, 2017).
CEO's personal life
Chief Executive Officer is a main element of this strategy as this position is the trigger
point to implement the leave loudly strategy. This helped in imparting pace in personal life also.
With the hustle of work, many CEO’s do not able to maintain their work life balance, but this
strategy helped in achieving this (Cohen, 2017). Align personal family with work life family is

STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
an extremely tough task but the implementation of this strategy fade away this gap. As the
protocol of leaving premises loudly so that everyone should be aware about it help in distributing
accountability and authority in disguise. And with the help of this strategy, personal life of Chief
Executive Officer shaped in a productive way as he or she can do important task of their personal
lives by selecting any one important task from the list of important tasks and schedule work
accordingly (Shah, Irani, & Sharif, 2017). It has also influence on the subordinates as CEO
leaves loudly, it gives an opportunity to end or i their shifts early and spend more time at home
depending upon the duration required for the tasks that has been allotted because these all
benefits can be attained if the quality and delivery speed of the work do not varies. Hence this
strategy helped CEO strategically in maintaining work life balance and shaped their personal life
in a desired and effective manner. Moreover, it also gives fringe benefits like parental off to
employees that also entice the father duties of male individuals (Beer, 2015).
How strategy can improve workplace morale and productivity
Morale represents the general satisfaction of employees at the workplace which is
reflected directly in their work productivity (Brewster, 2017). Many a times employees are
unable to achieve a work-life balance where they either fail to accomplish their goals as an
employee at the office or they are unable to fulfill their personal life responsibilities (Sherman &
Block, 2017). The sense of inability to carry out professional work and personal work hand in
hand results in low morale. This leads to grievances and frustrations among employees which
ultimately affect their productivity adversely. The mantra “Leave your personal life at home
where it belongs” has been followed in past generations but the employers of today’s generation
understand the importance of work-life balance for the company’s success (Eisenberger, Malone
& Presson, 2016). The employers are now aware that the professional life of an employee is

STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
greatly influenced by his/her personal life through morale and productivity. So a new mantra is
now coming into existence for the employees of newer generation which says “Leave loudly”.
The concept of “Leave loudly” is an effort to make employees think and believe that they are
able to and can make a positive balance between their professional life and personal life (Marler
& Boudreau, 2017). It aims to provide them the platform to show their excellence not only in
their workplace but also in their personal lives. This strategy ensures flexibility to the employees
in their start and finish points aiming to improve their productivity in work. An initiative “One
Simple Thing” works towards enabling the employees to build their work-life around the single
most important thing that they choose thus helping to enhance morale and productivity of
employees at the workplace. This strategy is a boon to many female employees as they are
provided the grounds where they are able to manage their personal and professional lives
whether in terms of maternity leaves or taking care of their household needs on daily basis thus
enhancing their morale and productivity towards work (Cohen, 2017). This strategy aims to keep
the morale of employees high which will result in high levels of job satisfaction and employees
will be willing to work. They would not like to work anywhere else and invest more emotionally
for the company’s success. A company’s long term success and productivity lies in the art of its
skilled workers. This strategy is directed towards retaining its skilled staff. Thus, Leave loudly
strategy is inclined towards the accomplishment of company’s goals but not at the cost of
satisfaction of the employees. It is a newer approach directed towards improving the employees’
loyalty and interest in their work and organization along with fulfilling their personal chores
(Dwarswaard, Bakker, Staa & Boeije, 2016).

STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Conclusion
Leave loudly strategy by PepsiCo aims in accomplishing the work-life balance, talent
retention, promoting diversity and a lot more. This strategy is directed towards promoting
flexible working schedule and delivering the quality work on time. Flexible working hours thus
provides the ground to achieve balance between the personal and professional lives. The strategy
takes into account that middle and lower level employees are not burdened by their supervisors.
This strategy intentionally asks a supervisor to leave loudly so that the same liberty is enjoyed by
others employees too. This strategy is a new step towards women empowerment. Such flexible
working conditions aid in making corporate life of women easier which then results in a higher
number of women at leadership levels. Not only women are targeted to seek benefits through this
strategy but also male employees are aimed at. This strategy has provided the benefits like
parental off so that male employees can fulfill the father duties. One of the enticing features of
this strategy is taking into account all employees whether married or unmarried to follow their
passion, hobbies etc. but nothing is done at the cost of quality work. With a great number of
responsibilities lying upon a CEO of a company it is difficult for him to maintain a work-life
balance but this strategy helps in achieving this. Both morale and productivity are highly
correlated. This strategy has included various features to raise the morale of employees which
results in their job satisfaction and productive work. Employees develop the sense of
responsibility towards one’s company. Thus, this strategy aims to provide maximum benefits to
employees ensuring a high employee retention rate, quality work and accomplishing company
goals in time. This strategy is another way to alleviate the gap between achievement of
professional and personal goals simultaneously.

STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
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