Coca-Cola Hellenic

Aligning employer brand management with employee engagement

Coca-Cola Hellenic (CCH), is the second largest of Coca-Cola’ global bottling and distribution partners, with 48,000 employees operating across 28 countries, including most of Southern, Central and Eastern Europe (including Russia), and Nigeria. In 2006 CCH developed its first group wide Employee Value Proposition, with a core positioning ‘Passion for Excellence’ supported by four further defining attributes. From its inception the EVP was designed both as a positioning platform for consistent group-wide recruitment communication and a reference point for focusing the company’s people management and engagement strategy.

Coca-Cola Hellenic’s EVP

Passion for Excellence (Core Positioning)

“A passion driven organisation sharing a commitment to excel in everything we do”.

Making a difference (Attribute)

“There’s no passion without progress. CCH believes in setting clear goals and letting people get on with taking action. There’s always a challenge, every opportunity to prove yourself and very little chance of getting bored”.

Part of a winning team (Attribute)

Coca-Cola’s status as the world’s no.1 brand has been achieved through a relentless passion to win. Whatever your role in CCH you’re part of a team that enjoys competing and never settles for second best.

Realizing your full potential (Attribute)

“CCH is as passionate about bringing out the best in people as it is about getting results. With growing investment in training and an emphasis on home-grown talent, there are thousands of career success stories at CCH”.

An enjoyment business (Attribute)

“CCH brings enjoyment to millions of people through its market leading brands and the many community activities our employees participate in each year. We try and ensure people enjoy their work as much as consumers enjoy our products”.

Following this EVP definition, CCH ran a group-wide engagement survey, which confirmed their assumption that the core positioning was highly credible internally (75% favourability), alongside two of the four supporting attributes. 85% of employees believed their work made an impact / difference, and 75% felt part of a winning team. It also provided confirmation and a useful benchmark for two of the areas (‘Realising potential’ and ‘Enjoyment business’ / Fun at work) that they expected to be powerful in driving employee engagement, but weaker in terms of current CCH performance.

Over the next 2 years, the EVP and engagement survey findings helped to focus CCH’s attention on strengthening these two stretch attributes. The ‘Realising potential’ attribute was supported by three inter-linked, group-wide programmes: the introduction of a new career pathing and leadership development model (supported by a new management development curriculum); a new Performance Management Framework, and a new front-line leadership training programme (the first step in the new leadership curriculum), called ‘Passion to Lead’. It was believed that placing the immediate focus on front line managers would deliver a double dose of support for the ‘Realising your full potential’ attribute, both directly, through an increased training investment in developing the most populous group within the overall ‘leadership community’, and indirectly, through the impact on employees associated with the following improvement in team leaders’ coaching and development skills. In 2008, this progress was maintained through the introduction of a further leadership training programme targeting the ‘Managers of Managers’ called ‘Leadership Excellence’, and the development of a team of internal coaches. The second, ‘Fun at Work’ focus, was devolved to local country managers, with the central team helping to share information about successful initiatives across the Group. This involved a wide range of interventions including from the upgrading of social facilities, focusing greater attention on team recognition and celebrating success, to improving work-life balance.

Between 2007 and 2010, the same employee engagement survey was used to track both the internal strength of the EVP (by means of an Employer Brand Index), and related improvements in employee engagement. From 2006 to 2007 the percentage of fully engaged employees (defined in terms of the proportion of employees providing a positive answer to all 3 key questions relating to discretionary effort, advocacy and loyalty / intent to stay) improved from 36% to 43%, and by 2010 had risen to 55%.

Coca Cola Hellenic also improved its position in the Best Workplaces in Europe league table from a relatively low position in 2008, to 18th in 2009, and 6th in 2010. This is particularly remarkable given that over the same period, CCH maintained a firm control over salary inflation and initiated a 10% reduction in its overall headcount in response to the economic downturn. This combination of cost control and high engagement has enabled CCH to outperform the market during a very difficult period, a success reflected in the company’s ability to increase its dividend payment year on year for the last 5 years. CCH believes these highly positive outcomes were the direct result of focused investment in improving those weaker performing EVP attributes that were known to be powerful engagement drivers, and employer brand communication (which focused attention on the company’s commitment to its EVP promises during a challenging period of cost reduction).

"Our strong focus on employer Brand has helped us during our years of growth and even now in a ore difficult economic environment to attract and retain key talent in our Company thus delivering a great competitive advantage for our Company for the years to come.“

- Bernard Kunerth, Chief HR Officer, Coca-Cola Hellenic

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The senior team at CCH believe that investing in the company’s employer brand has significantly improved their ability to attract, engage and retain key talent, and in turn helped maintaining their performance through the economic downturn. This success has been reflected in the company’s ability to increase its dividend payment year on year for the last 5 years.

If you’d like to discover more about applying similar employer brand management practices to your own organization, please contact: richard.mosley@pib.co.uk

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