To keep any organization successful, it’s important to manage both resources and people well. Whether you run a small business or a large company, using your resources wisely and managing your team effectively will help you reach your goals. There are many ways to do this, but the most important thing is to find what works best for your business. By understanding what makes your organization unique and using the right tools and methods, you can build a strong system to manage resources and talent, setting your business up for long-term success.
Table of Contents
Assignment
Learning Outcome 1 Understand the impact of the changing business environment on resourcing and talent management strategy and practice.
Question 1
AC 1.1 Analyse one external and one internal factor that is shaping the organisation’s resourcing and talent strategy. Recommend how this strategy could be improved to respond to these factors.
Introduction
With businesses becoming more, more competitive, and more and more dynamic, organizations need to be able to change resourcing and talent strategies aiming towards sustainability as well as operational efficiency. As a global leader in beverage industry, Coca-Cola is particularly exposed to many external and internal factors in acquiring, retaining and developing talent in its organization (Coca-Cola, 2023). This analysis examines one external factor and one internal factor including, technological improvement and organizational culture, which influence Coca Cola is resourcing and talent strategy. A review of these factors will determine their significant impact, and strategic recommendations will be made for their improvement.
Technological Advancements as an External Factor
Technological advancement is one of the most important external factors affecting Coca Cola’s resourcing and talent strategy (The Coca-Cola Company, 2024). Automation, artificial intelligence (AI) and digital transformation is taking over fast and reshaping the beverage industry’s work requirements. Notably, technology has become deeply integrated in Coca-Cola operations through automated production lines, AI marketing and AI based data analytics for customer studies (Deloitte, 2025).
Due to the benefits of technological innovation, such as efficiency improvement and cost reduction, there are also challenges in the workforce planning. Increasing automation demands staff with at least advanced digital skills, which may not resonate with current workers’ potential. In furtherance, technology driven changes can result into job displacement, necessitating that companies ensure employee re-skill and up-skill through robust initiatives to ensure workforce employability. In 2025, the World Economic Forum (2020) observes automation and AI will take away 85m jobs, however, 97 may emerge requiring new skill sets (Russo, 2020).
However, Nawaz et al. (2024) show that while automation streamlines operations, it does so at the cost of human involvement that is key to innovation, as well as customer relationship management. In addition, further dependence to technology can give rise to cyber risks, which companies will need to counteract. According to Mayer et al. (2025), organizations that do not balance automation along with the human oversight might experience a decrease in the morale and productivity of their employees. Consequently, technology has to be harnessed responsibly to exploit the benefits without damaging human capital development.
To overcome such challenges, Coca-Cola needs to create a digital talent pipeline, which discovers and prepares candidates, who have AI, data science and automations skills. This can be bridged by collaborating with universities and technical institutes. Besides, Coca-Cola should introduce an internal digital transformation academy to ensure that existing employees receive the future ready skills.
Organizational Culture as an Internal Factor
Coca Cola’s corporate strategy has a profound effect on its resourcing and talent strategy. The company focuses on diversity, inclusion, and employee engagement (Itam and Bagali, 2018). It creates a community of highly performing people, who come from all over the world. Despite this, globalization, diversification and workforce may create challenges in maintaining a strong organizational culture.
Aligning values of corporate with multi-generational workforce is a major challenge. Millennials and Z employees are more interested in work that serves a purpose, flexible work and development opportunities (Hamer, 2020). In light of these changing employee expectations, Coca-Cola must support the talent strategy align to these employee expectations while maintaining its brand identity and corporate values. On the other hand, senior employees may prefer stability and traditional hierarchical work structures, which may not match with the culture requirements.
A contrasting argument suggests that although Coca Cola’s culture encourages diversity and inclusion, it misses out opportunities to offer equal career advancement opportunities. According to Krenn (2025), unconscious biases in selection and promotion of leadership decisions continue to afflict large multinational corporations. In addition, different regional work norms and rules in a global market can hinder the implementation of a single corporate culture.
Coca Cola should integrate localized workforce engagement practices into its cultural strategy to address such challenges. Regional leadership development programs would allow a company to implement the values it has. Additionally, the company can enhance the existing mentorship programs for cross-generational learning as well as mentoring and career progression.
Recommendations for Strategy Improvement
In order to respond to technological advancements, Coca-Cola should adopt a proactive workforce development program such that it enhances its talent strategy. Continuous learning opportunities, digital literacy training and cross-functional skill building should all be taken up as part of this initiative (Dagli, 2024). Partnerships with educational institutions, in which programs in AI, robotics and data analytics are created, will also help address the skills gap.
In addition, Coca-Cola needs to adopt a hybrid talent acquisition model through internal development as well as external recruitment of tech savvy professionals (Ardi et al., 2024). Such a culture that promotes ongoing learning can help organizations avoiding the negative impacts of automation on jobs and improving its positioning in emerging digital markets.
In response to this Coca-Cola needs to put more effort in refining employee value proposition taking career growth, well-being and purpose driven work as a key area of focus. Career progression frameworks with a transparent framework will be established to ensure equal opportunity for advancement. Moreover, fostering localized cultural adaptation strategies within the global operation will enable the aligning of corporate values with expectations of employees in the regional context (Naidoo and van, 2025).
There is also the need to embrace employee feedback mechanisms such as regular engagement surveys and focus groups to understand workplace sentiment and how to adapt the initiatives. Coca-Cola can address the satisfaction and retention of employees by exploring remote and hybrid flexible work models. Lee, Chong and Ojo (2024) states that organizations that have adopted flexible work strategies have higher levels of employee engagement.
Conclusion
Technological developments as well as organisational culture play a key role in shaping Coca Cola’s resourcing and talent strategy. Automation and digitalization improve the efficiency, but requires investments in the reskilling and adaptation of workforces. Consequently, it is important to create an inclusive and adaptable organizational culture for sustainable employee engagement and retention. By preparing in advance to overcome these challenges using strategic workforce development and closing culture gaps, Coca-Cola can develop a high-quality talent strategy to support current and future business requirements. Coca-Cola can also become a preferred employer of choice in changing global labour market by providing digital skill training, leadership development, and flexible work arrangements.
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