Abstract

PepsiCo India was facing a major attrition problem with senior executives. It was believed that the executives were exiting the company as they were unable to reconcile with its ‘Power of One’ (PO1) strategy. The strategy was about merging the beverages wing with the foods division. It was aimed at leveraging the synergetic benefits of selling food and beverages together since consumers tended to buy beverages and snacks together. Five senior executives of PepsiCo India resigned from the company in 2015, joining a stream of colleagues who had left the company following a change in corporate strategy. Even though PepsiCo India had leadership development initiatives in place and had created a talent pool, industry observers felt that the company would have to resolve the attrition issue at the top level with effective people strategies as well as change management initiatives.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Understand the issues and challenges involved in dealing with the employee attrition at PepsiCo.
• Analyze how PepsiCo can deal with the resistance of employees toward change in its corporate strategy.
• Explore ways in which PepsiCo can retain its senior executives and make a change in corporate strategy acceptable for them.

Keywords

Attrition, management exodus, ‘Power of One’ strategy, Corporate strategy, Leadership development, ‘Shadow program’, People strategies, Change management