Approach

As part of our pep+ (PepsiCo Positive) ambitions, we’re striving to build a better workplace. To do this, we’re working to drive engagement with our employees — improving how they feel about their jobs, team and company direction. Some key levers for engagement are: 

• The PepsiCo Way to establish shared values;
• Feedback mechanisms (e.g., surveys) to better understand employee perspectives and needs;
• The Smiles program to allow employees to express appreciation toward other employees and celebrate success; and
• One Smile at a Time to support building community connections.

Embedding authentic and shared company values is an important tool in establishing a positively-engaged workforce. PepsiCo's Global Talent Management team is responsible for our employee engagement strategy and leads efforts to establish core cultural values and opportunities for employees to share feedback on their experience with the company.

Our core values, known as The PepsiCo Way, represent seven employee behaviors that we believe will help to bolster our mission, drive our vision and build a strong corporate culture. These values are embedded in processes across the company — from performance objectives to our annual surveys. Additionally, employees can celebrate achievements in each of The PepsiCo Way behaviors through our Smiles program.

In order to achieve our ambitions, we have established various channels for employees to voice opinions fearlessly, one of the seven PepsiCo Way behaviors. These candid opinions are a critical input in identifying areas of organizational strength as well as opportunities to strengthen our practices. Each engagement channel is designed to provide the opportunity to speak up, providing valuable feedback to those empowered to address it. They include:

• Organizational Health Survey (OHS): An annual census survey available to all employees to gauge employee engagement and commitment to PepsiCo.
• Employee Confidence Index (ECI): A pulse check on employee engagement and confidence through sampling conducted three times a year.
• Life cycle surveys: A mechanism that enables PepsiCo to measure employee experience and engagement at key moments in the employee life cycle.
• Managing The PepsiCo Way (MPW): An annual upwards feedback process that enables managers to receive feedback from their direct reports regarding their strengths as a manager, as well as their opportunities for exemplifying The PepsiCo Way behaviors.

These tools are publicized to every level of employee, from frontline to executive. Senior leaders share global communications about the surveys, and posters, kiosks and QR codes help encourage engagement from every employee. Individual survey responses are confidential. Results are aggregated and shared with team leaders with five or more direct employees in order to protect anonymity.

Equipped with survey results, we identify opportunities for improvement at both the team- and company-levels. Each year, executive leadership and team leaders review the OHS and ECI results and take action based on issues identified in the surveys. By listening to employees through these channels and acting to solve issues raised, we aim to ensure we are providing the best employment experience possible.

In addition to surveys, we have other initiatives to elicit employee ideas on company strategy and direction, such as our crowd-sourcing project, Next Big Idea — an employee-led and -driven online business innovation game that allows employees to collaborate with colleagues around the world to act as owners, voice opinions fearlessly and share their ideas to improve the future of the company, from products to practices. The top three employee teams, as voted by PepsiCo employees, are given the opportunity to present their ideas to senior leadership.

Smiles, our global employee recognition program, helps to encourage and acknowledge The PepsiCo Way behaviors, further driving employee engagement. The Smiles platform allows employees to recognize colleagues for demonstrating The PepsiCo Way behaviors or to celebrate milestones like work anniversaries. 

Employee engagement extends beyond the walls of PepsiCo facilities into the communities where we operate. In partnership with the PepsiCo Foundation, we are striving to make a positive impact by giving employees the opportunity to engage with their communities and with each other. Our employee volunteering platform, One Smile at a Time, helps PepsiCo employees give back to their communities, instilling a sense of pride and forging stronger connections among local teams and their communities. 

Progress

Our 2023 internal survey results show that PepsiCo employees feel high levels of pride in working for PepsiCo, are energized by their work and are confident in PepsiCo’s future success. In 2023, 80% of all employees participated in PepsiCo’s Organizational Health Survey (OHS). PepsiCo’s OHS score stood at 78% with employee engagement at 81% and employee commitment at 75%. External benchmarking suggests that our employee engagement remains strong compared with other Fortune 500 peers.

In 2023, employees sent more than 1,000,000 smiles on the Smiles platform, up over 20% from 2022. Additionally, to celebrate success on key strategic priorities, we added pep+ to our recognition categories within the Smiles program. 

In 2023, more than 11,000 PepsiCo employees logged more than 163,000 hours volunteering through One Smile at a Time. Volunteers contributed their time on issues important to our employees, their communities and the company, including water access, food security and economic empowerment. 

What's next?

Looking ahead, we expect to continue the general structure and process of surveys such as our Organizational Health Survey, Employee Confidence Index, Managing The PepsiCo Way, as well as our Next Big Idea crowdsourcing initiative. We will continue to identify and implement opportunities to improve the employee experience.

To further embed The PepsiCo Way in employees’ everyday behaviors, additional learnings and new methods are being developed as PepsiCo dedicates itself to simplification and understanding. We are dedicated to improving employee engagement and remedying any gaps identified from the previous years to better embed the PepsiCo Way within our workforce.