Scenario: Congratulations, you have just been hired at Keurig Green Mountain, In

Question

Scenario: Congratulations, you have just been hired at Keurig Green Mountain, Inc., a Fortune 1000 company, as its new organizational development consultant! You already know that the company is recognized for award-winning beverages, innovative brewing technology, and socially responsible business practices. In addition, you just found out on their website, http://www.keuriggreenmountain.com/en/Sustainability/SustainableProducts/Overview.aspx, that this growing company has an environmental commitment of "zero-waste-to-landfill by 2020.” However, the current K-Cups, as a whole, are not recyclable.

Recently in the news, John Sylvan, the founder of Keurig Green Mountain, admitted he had regrets regarding the amount of pollution K-Cups cause. In fact, a journalist reported in 2014 that if "K-Cups sold were placed end-to-end, they would circle the globe 10.5 times” (Hamblin, 2015). Although the company has future plans to produce recyclable cups, a morale problem has started in the organization (fictional problem for this scenario). With four years until a sustainable solution, the company is concerned with retaining their employees and keeping those employees motivated during this transition. The executive leadership team has hired you, as an organizational development consultant, to assess the situation and provide a proposal on how to navigate the next few years with their diverse employees as the company grows.

At a minimum, your 3-5 page proposal should include:

·Ideas on a new reward system to get employees immediately engaged with global social and environmental responsibility

·How the company can create a more innovative working environment to help their employees identify problems and opportunities as the company transitions   

·Ideas on how the company can help employees not get stressed and remain motivated for peak performance

·How the company can drive successful collaboration among their diverse employees as the company shifts its values and endures public scrutiny

·Use examples on what other organizations do in this type of situation to help the executive team better understand organizational effectiveness and behavior

Explanation / Answer

As the new Organizational Development (OD) Consultant of Keurig Green Mountain, Inc., I give the proposal below having different components therein:

Creation of a New Reward System:

The existing reward system has been based on annual performance review. Employees are given annual increments at the end of financial year after completion of their annual reviews. But usually the annual increment gives rise to only 2-3% increase in one’s salary, to take care of inflation. However this small increment does not bring that much motivation and does not result in too much performance improvements, as has been observed over the past few years. Moreover, managers often tend to forget how their subordinates have performed all throughout the year.

So I would suggest replacement of annual performance review with a new type of reward system which would focus more on bonuses and perks & benefits. There would be a continuous review system which might give salary increment based on even a week’s performance (exceptional achievement in a week). Higher bonuses would be given to those employees who carry out lot of socially and environmentally responsible activities.

Companies like Adobe Systems Inc., Accenture PLC and others have already done away with annual performance review system and are giving importance to bonuses and perks & benefits.

Creation of a More Innovative Working Environment:

Employees would be encouraged to share all types of data and information over formal meetings and informal meetings (in company cafeteria), company get-togethers, brainstorming sessions and others. This would help the employees come out with innovative solutions to the existing problems.

Also ideas in the organization need not come only in a top-down manner but also in a bottom-up manner, where lower-level employees may come out with any type of innovative idea. So employees would be persuaded to look for ideas all over the organization and also rewarded for their new ideas.

Measures to help employees not get stressed:

One can have a good gym within the organization where employees can destress in-between their work hours. There can be a good ‘Yoga’ instructor who will make employees do ‘Yoga’ before start of their work. This will help them remain more stress-free throughout the day. Also there can be a place to do Aerobics. One can also have a good Library where employees with reading habits can read casual books or light novels to rejuvenate themselves.

Driving Successful Collaboration among Diverse Employees:

One can have TGIF (Thank God It’s Friday) meetings (like Google) which will be full of fun, food, drinks, idea sharing, playing of games and others.

One can also have JLT (Just Like That) parties from time to time where employees can play some Management Games and the winners will be rewarded.

Other team-building exercises can be carried out from time to time to increase collaboration among employees.            

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