Managing People
With proper management, employees can provide competitive advantages to a given company in terms of higher productivity, efficiency and effectiveness especially in a manufacturing business wherein employees are the one’s who operate the machineries and equipment in order to produce a finish product. In other words, proper management of human resources could lead a given organization with higher production and profitability.
Coca-Cola Company, commonly known as Coke, is currently one of the top manufacturing companies around the globe with more than 90,000 employees working on its various manufacturing site on different countries and producing wide variety of product lines . Therefore, despite of the large scale use of machineries and equipment in the production line of Coke, still, the said company is extensively uses human resources in order to secure smoothly flow of their operation in the production and management area.
In order for Coke to utilize its human resource as one of its sources of competitive advantages against its competitors in the market would be to implement effective people management strategies that would promote teamwork, self initiative, leadership skills to every employees of the said manufacturing company. Effective people management is a concept wherein an individual with skills in reading other people, understanding them, and relate effectively with them would be the main ingredient in order to effectively manage people .
Usually, team leaders must have and develop this kind of skills in order to secure the success of people management. By reading, understanding, relating the way how the behaviors and minds of other people works, then, that person can easily motivate his/her subordinates and solve conflicts in no time at all which could improve the productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness of the entire team and/or organization. Effective People Management
It was already identified that success at home, community, and workplace relies mostly on people skills or interpersonal skills of an individual. An organization having a weak people management only attains nothing for it will serve as grounds for misunderstandings and selfishness of employees in the workplace resulting to unwanted consequences. Like for instance, for the case of FMC Green River wherein its manager was not able to establish good working relationship with his subordinates leading each employee choose to work on their own and rely on their own efforts .
Employees of FMC Green River do not know the importance of teamwork; rather, they believe that they can only achieve good performance by working alone. Due to this, sales and overall productivity of FMC Green Aberdeen dropped significantly compared to a newly established FMC Aberdeen where, since its establishment, has constantly enjoying high productivity rate as its employees works as a team and has the initiative to promote group effort in handling issues concerning the entire organization .
In this regard, it is therefore clear that the manager of FMC Aberdeen successfully managed its employees but instilling into the minds of his employees the importance of teamwork and the initiative to promote group effort. Benefits from Effective People Management Effective people management can bring not only high productivity to an organization. It can also provide harmonious working relationship between the management and the group of workers which provides ease in communicating with one another.
Companies with ineffective people management oftentimes experiences strikes and street demonstrations from their employees as the latter perceives negative things on the former even if there is no enough evidence to prove their claim. Sometimes it is a matter of how well the management of an organization opens their tables to their employees for transparency and earns their trust. It would be a lot easier to solve a problem if there will be transparency between the management and the working class, and if there is a good working relationship on both parties.
Like for the case of Wal-Mart wherein the dispute between the labor union and management was only caused by inability of Wal-Mart to become transparent to its workers especially when it comes to giving employment benefits and wages. As a result, workers tries to leave their responsibilities on the stores of Wal-Mart, negatively affecting the operation of the said retail company, and went to the streets to voice out their protest and arguments regarding the treatment that they receive from Wal-Mart’s management.
In this regard, the inability of an organization to effectively manage their people could also lead to negative speculations between both parties that only causes tremendous amount of losses on the part of the organization. Effective people management is just like managing a company wherein team leaders must steer perfectly in order to guide them to the right path and he/she can treat each employee as a department which the team leader must monitor simultaneously and this is one of the reasons why team leaders must be skillful in order to do this task perfectly.
Moreover, effective people management can also motivate employees of an organization and develop sense of confidence. Since there will be a good working relationship that will be established during the initial stage of effective people management, in the long run, employees would starts to feel being valued and treasured by the company thereby leading to always give their best on every responsibility that the company/team leaders will assign.
If this continues, with the good performances of employees starting to reflect in the company, they will start to gain self confidence since they will be able to see how their good performance contributed to the success of the company . Therefore, in this regard, effective people management could serves as the root of many improvements in the work force of an organization like having harmonious working relationship between the management and the workers and the development of self confidence of workers as well as motivating the employees to work hard for the benefit of the entire organization.
Take the case of Starbucks wherein Howard Schultz, with great leadership and effective people management skills, has been able to establish harmonious working environment on the stores of Starbucks which caused the improvement of the quality of their services and products especially the baristas and service crew . Customers have been commending the excellent quality of services and products of Starbucks which serves as their main reason why they still come on the said coffeehouse. For many years, Starbucks has been dominating the coffeehouse industry in United States and also in the international market.
Its brand loyalty with its customers is great that competitors find it hard to break. Employees also enjoy working in Starbucks and always ready to give their best to fulfill their task and responsibilities. To cut things short, due to the effective people management of Schultz, Starbucks presently stands in the market as the epitome of success and dominance in the coffeehouse industry domestically and internationally. Potential Impact of Effective People Management to Coca Cola Company
Based from the case of Starbucks, Coca Cola Company can also use their employees as one of their sources of competitive advantages especially in the upcoming 2012 Olympics in London. Motivated, hardworking, and confident employees would bring Coke successfully in the 2012 Olympics outperforming its competitors especially Pepsi. Volume of production of Coke could improve and so with their services. Employees in the management floors can close deals with various retailers and suppliers in the market in no time through the effective people management.
As for the 2012 Olympics, Coke employees, especially in teams, can easily come up with bright ideas for innovative marketing strategies before and during the Olympic games which will successfully tap their target customers in U. K. and the rest of the consumers watching the said event. Closing the deal, in order to become the main sponsor in Olympic Games, needs superb interpersonal and experienced employees of Coke. Aside from this, Coke representatives must be motivated and know the way other people think especially when dealing with the officials of the Olympic Games.
Due to this, effective people management strategies would mold employees of Coke, especially top and middle managers, in order to close the deal with the officials of Olympic Games to become the main sponsor of the said event in 2012. Moreover, on the marketing department of Coke, initiative in conducting market research on potential target market of Coke and the innovative marketing strategies that Coke will implement in order to successfully tap their key customers would be vital.
But through the aid of effective people management, the sense of initiative can be developed to an individual after extensive training and lectures from the department head of the marketing department of Coke. Creativity is one of the important ingredients in order for the marketing team to establish successful marketing strategies. Since employees becomes motivated after undergoing the effective people management strategy conducted either by their team leader or department head, then, effective people management can really improve the productivity of Coke’s marketing department .
As for the production area, workers that operate machines will become motivated after effective people management is executed by their production manager. Oftentimes, workers in the production area only perform their duties just enough to fulfill what is stated on their job descriptions, but if the production manager successfully motivated his/her subordinates, then, self initiative and hard working will reign over the perception of the workers which eventually would lead to efficient and productive production processes.
Cost minimization and profit maximization can also be attained if workers would continue this kind of working condition. Distribution channel of Coke can also be improved by effective people management strategies. By motivating and instilling their value to the entire success of the company would surely boost the morale of employees on this department. Distribution channel of Coke is the one responsible for delivering their products from their manufacturing plants to various business customers like retailers, middleman, grocery stores and the like which can uplift the sales volume of Coke in terms of inventory replenishment.
With motivated employees in the distribution channel department, Coke can now deliver their finished products faster resulting to quick inventory replenishment, minimizing the travel cost, improving the reputation of the company in terms of on-time/early delivery of orders. Stocks of Coke products must be replenished in no time especially during the Olympics wherein there are a lot of potential customers that would come into the said event. Delay in the delivery of Coke products might result on lower sales and income that is why effective people management is also important and beneficial to the distribution channel of Coke.
Conclusion and Recommendation It is now therefore clear that effective people management strategies can provide Coke higher growth and success in the up coming 2012 Olympics by motivating, instilling the value of teamwork and hardworking, and the development of sense of confidence of the employees that will result to high productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness on various departments of Coke. With the effort and initiative of Coke’s department heads and team leaders, effective people management can be implemented smoothly and effectively.
It is therefore important for Coke to implement this strategy right away as the pressure of 2012 Olympics is now emerging in the market.
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