Human Resource Practices - Starbucks - Case Study Example

Human Resource Practices: Starbucks The Firm’S Organizational Culture or Strategic Business Objectives Starbucks, one of the most prominent businesses until today, has its culture of power to be exerted for socialization where they could persuade consumers for its goal to have a profitable success (Batchelor & Krister, 2012). Moreover, the culture of Starbucks was said to have its own unique designs, symbols, and values itself. The ambiance of its culture is welcoming and overwhelming. Schultz (2011), who initiated the conceptual culture of Starbucks, stated that love is the most valuable motivational drive that attracts lots of consumers and investors (as cited in Batchelor & Krister, 2012, p. 6). Another part of its culture is the radical drama that imbues every consumer wherein the aroma of the Starbucks coffee products would seem to hallucinate the consumer’s minds to be stimulated with its fragrance. The drama of the coffee is not a drama at all; it is for real that it makes the consumers taste the coffee as satisfying that could make the consumers gratified for it with the transparent service of Starbuck crews. This would go along to how Colquitt, LePine, and Wesson (2012) described the workers as the one who are responsible to actively answer and take the concerns of the customers with energy, enthusiasm, and zest. Starbucks place is well-soothing and environmental friendly as it seems that it dwells in every heart of consumers who find their service amazing (Batchelor & Krister, 2012). Michelli (2007) has been great in explaining that Starbucks has continued to become “extraordinary” in which the culture has been shaped with its own perspective and principle that includes the unique concepts that the company engages, how every little thing matters to the company (the suggestions and opinions of others that could make the company more improved), how the customers would be enlightened, and how the company would switch on the attention of its flaws in order to minimize and diminish the factors that could hamper to its own success. In a specific manner, Starbucks induces the privilege of making their strategic business centralized unto the satisfaction of what the customers truly need. The objective of the Starbucks company is to make their company attractive to the perceptions of the people (Tu, Wang, & Chang, 2012). This could mean that Starbucks wanted to make their brand of names to be lucid enough that could build a lasting rapport to its customers. With this, one could merely say that the company truly upholds the juncture of aiming to be globally known specifically in some parts of Asia, such as the Taiwan. Therefore, the objective of the Starbucks is to spread the principles of their company mission in which customers would feel the enthusiasm of the Starbucks high standard of coffee (Paryani, 2011). This is relative to what Perera, Kerr, Kimura, and Lima (2009) have found base on their case study for Starbucks that it aims to make an innovation towards their brand name. To maintain the brand image of the Starbucks, they strategically focus on how they could sustainably create more satisfying and encouraging products for the customers wherein they complemented their coffee products with food such as cakes, cupcakes, and sandwiches (Seaford, Culp, & Brooks, 2012). Therefore, Starbucks strategize on how to make a long lasting endurance of their brand as the greatest aim of their business. The cultural background of the Starbucks organization is reflective to its own business strategic goals that mostly refer to the “license and joint venture” and “Human resource strategies” (ZhenJia, 2006). The former refers to the requirements of the Starbucks business in investing to other countries specifically in the location of Japan. The latter refers to the work quality of employees where empowerment is needed. Human resource strategies empower and motivate the employees to work with satisfaction and comfortability. Hence, the corporate culture of Starbucks engages every employee to feel the commitment that they could best offer to the company with the enhancement of teamwork, communication skills of the employees along with the benefits of rewards, such as affirmation to the employees’ performances, benefits, and constant trainings for the needed improvement of employees skills (Zain, Ishak, & Ghani, 2009). Starbucks also ensures the concerns of the employees as they take them to be happy with the nature of work that these employees have as Schultz emphasized that happiness results to spontaneous productivity to work ("Starbucks Corporation,” 2003). The strategic culture of the Starbucks company seems to be the best as its management indulges the customers to have an unforgettable experience with its sensual creativity that it makes the customers feel the eagerness to yearn and crave for the Starbucks products, services, and environment as well (Verhoef et al., 2009). Accordingly, the Starbucks company may use the conceptual model on strategic matters wherein there are considerations to factors that could be used as determinants to how the customers would be very satisfied. These factors include the interactive environment (the manner in which customers would be observed on how they would love to interact to each other that could influence their perception and behavioral decisions, how the customers would be managed and would be disseminated to the groups of customers who are interacting to each other, especially if they only want to be alone, social management to the customers), the service of the employees (technologies that could make the service faster and more efficient, how the employees would be given opportunities to explore the technological outlets and other technological counterparts in order to know how customers would enjoy the recreation that could be given and proposed unto them), the scenic atmosphere where customers would love the smell, design, and the overall ambiance of the place (Verhoef et al., 2009). Additional factors include the quality of the products, the price, and the brand image of the company. They do these as alternative to how people could think and feel the branding of the company that could change the people’s perceptual outlook to the taste of coffee (Moore, 2006). This means that the company withholds the opportunity to bring global change with the kind of business that it has where people could be influenced with the impact of its brand. The Existing HR Policies, Practices and Investments--Do These Policies Support the Organization’s Culture or Objectives? According to Boudreau and Ramstad (2007), the Human Resource practice of Starbucks begun with the trust of its organizational leaders who initiate what its talents must portray with their ability to recruit employees with potentials who contributed to the global success of Starbucks. The human resource of Starbucks practically assures the employees to gain benefits and great salaries. The human resource would take into consideration the insurances and health-care benefits for the Starbucks employees or the baristas, the ones who sell coffees. The most covered human resource practice of Starbucks lies into two main beneficial experiences that refer to the career and personality growth of the baristas or employees who could enhance their motivational and interpersonal skills (Boudreau & Ramstad, 2007). Moreover, the baristas could also feel the confidence with their experience of work in Starbucks as one could be proud working in Starbucks because the organizational company is very known and branded based on the perceptions of the customers. Therefore, these things could be part of human resource that would make the baristas feel the sense of trust to the company where they belong. Furthermore, the Starbucks human resource creates the synergy of the baristas. The Starbucks organization has been also successful in terms of following the seven common practices that Pfeffer (1998) considered: the job security that the employees could be sure of, the appropriate hiring of the personnel, synergized team management among members involved in the organization, compensation benefits, trainings, performance assessments, and “wage discrepancies to different levels.” The human resource practices and policies were said to be supportive and in line of its strategic objective of the Starbuck business because as the organization matters on the rights and benefits of the employees, the employees would do their best for the sake of the organization (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart, & Wright, 2009). Starbucks policies embrace the importance of labor regulation laws wherein the workers are provided with health and safety assurance as the workers are considered as telecommuters of the company. According to Guiller and Kelly (2009), the employees are employer-standard telecommuters because most of them are getting their source of income in the company of Starbucks regardless of how they could have a full-time or part-time set of schedules. Moreover, the employees are also given with the fair labor standards of 1938 in which they are paid with the overtime rates and record-keeping data that would be used to check for the time that they logged in and out. Guiller and Kelly (2009) added that the employees should be given with proper compensation benefits with medical insurances. Starbucks offer health and medical benefits to every employee as well as to every partner of the employee, may it be the opposite or same-sex partners (Wickman, 2009). The benefit package of Starbucks is entitled to all full-time or part-time employees of the company as well as the partners of the company. Accordingly, the employees can have “401 thousand saving plan with employer match, tuition reimbursement, short-term disability, paid vacation time, and product discounts” (Kim, 2011). Starbucks attracts the investors with the quality of its products and services along with the proper management of its human capital operations (Paryani, 2011). Accordingly, the investors and customers themselves find a great satisfaction to the coffee of Starbucks, the baristas services, and the total experience of the customers. Therefore, the customers and investors find these things as something that could totally equate to the business objective and cultural concept of Starbucks. This would give confidence to the entrepreneurs who serve as investors and partners of the Starbucks company as the organization could also enjoy an Employee Stock Ownership Plan for the employees (Westerndorf, 2007). Therefore, the company gives opportunities to the entrepreneurial business partners to feel the confidence that they could make and assist with the success of their business through retaining and sustaining the best employees. The human resource policies, practices, and investments are in line unto the cultural business of Starbucks. This is relative to what Sandra Porter, who is the HR director of Starbucks, answered the interview base on how Starbucks is doing well in taking the concerns of its beloved employees (Peacock, 2011). As part of the Starbucks human resource, Porter shared how they would retain the best employees that they have. She shared that employees would be one of the major priorities of the company wherein the employees themselves could feel the confidence to stay longer in the job, which makes them feel the sense of career growth. Starbucks also had the “social investments” for those countries that manage to crop the products that are used for coffee making (Schultz & Smith, 2001). Accordingly, the company is taking up the concerns that could be good for the betterment of the social mankind. The founders made up their business because part of their objective is to help the environment and the citizens who need help. With this, they helped the Guatemala country, the place where their crops originated, to help the community, especially the farmers to have good facilities like hospital and educational procurements (Schultz & Smith, 2001). Behar and Goldstein (2007) supported this notion as he determined that leadership in Starbucks made up to manage the operations in the company. Therefore, Starbucks had truly embraced the value to the employees who bring global change and grows up the reputation of the company to be known. According to Behar and Goldstein (2007), there are principles of leadership that make the culture of Starbucks so endearing and welcoming that includes integrity of being clear with the goal of the company--to serve well with honesty and for real. Another leadership principle that is emphasized in the Starbucks culture also includes how the leaders are assigned to do the right thing to be the model to their constituents. What makes their system more collaborative that initiates teamwork is the ability of knowing how to independently motivate the employees and the leaders themselves (Behar & Goldstein, 2007). Moreover, leaders opt to care for the questions and concerns of the employees. Leaders must also be transparent in doing their tasks of managing the people by doing what they intend to say or plan. They are assigned to show and take action on the seeming plans and precautionary rules and regulations that must be followed. Starbucks also have leaders who will initiate justice by telling the truth to the head and to its underlying subgroup members. Behar and Goldstein (2007) added that the leaders in Starbucks will make the strategic operations effective if they know how to recognize and appreciate the personalities and the passion of the employees because in that way leaders would know how to be compassionate enough to others, especially to the workers. The implication of these things that refer to the leadership of the company will serve as one of the evidence how human resource policies, procedures, and investments would be in line to the culture and strategies of the organization (Simon, 2009). This is so because Starbucks could be considered as a brand that goes beyond to their organizational culture as it is one of the most well-known trademarks of the American culture. Starbucks, indeed, made America so known. How are these HR policies, practices and investments connected to the organization’s culture or objectives? If they don’t support the organization’s culture/business objectives, why? When the human resource policy of Starbucks involves the massive recruitment of employees, the attention to other employees who stayed longer in the company would be lessened. With this, old employees would find that the management system of the organization is already losing its track to organizational culture because employees would not feel the enthusiasm to work as they experienced dissatisfaction to the inconsistent pay that they are receiving and inconsistent schedules that would be assigned to them (Schepp, 2011; James, 2009). Thence, workers are feeling that their job security is shrinking in the company as they also have unclear health care insurances and low pay rates (Turl, 2009). Accordingly, these things lead the employees to make their own union without waiting for the premises of the national unions. This means that Starbucks must then reorganize the cultural goal it brings if its human resource could not comprehend the needs of their employees. The company has also experienced a complaint from the National Labor Relations Board who told that the company disregards the concerns of the employees (Gross, 2007). Accordingly, the employees were fired without taking the chance of getting enough and appropriate wages as they claim that they only get $8.75 dollars per hour. This could mean that the employees are not satisfied with their salaries. However, the allegations were denied by the Starbucks management (Gross, 2007). Hence, the management system could have been reluctant of managing the people in a right way (Margolies, 2011). Perhaps, the human resource management could have been afraid of taking the authority for the Starbucks employees. Therefore, there is a need to change for its management system or the culture it imposed if the mandates of the employees are not satisfied with it (Konecki, 2006). The Starbucks culture itself must then recreate the rules that the management could have imposed to avoid how employees would feel the degradation as the company rules for its fame. Anyways, employees may find the impression that the company does not take much effort in gaining and hearing their concerns as the management could have been confident enough that there would be lots and lots of people who could replace the employees as the company is commonly known in the whole wide world. There is also a need to work more for the human resource equal opportunity to the employees. The culture of Starbucks may have emphasized the importance of treating different employees with different gender statuses. However, Chou (2008) reported that there were employees of Starbucks who reported the unequal treatment to them as admitted by the Starbucks management that they are gay. This could mean that the management of Starbucks needs to work on things like they have to replenish the culture of equality that they emphasize as one of their principles because they did not follow their own principles of equality as there were other employees who feel being discriminated with their management. How could the firm’s HRM policies, practices and investments be more effective in supporting the organization’s culture or business objectives? What recommendations would you provide? What could be done in the firm’s HRM to improve the firm’s relative performance in the industry or even to the extent of generating some form of sustained competitive advantage? The human resource management policies, practices, and investments of Starbucks must need to do something, especially for the labor union of Starbucks who shout their concerns and who are seeking justice for their labor rights (Trick & Peoples, 2012). Therefore, the role of the human resource management will be taken into consideration in terms of their strategic ways in settling with the labor unions (Margolies, 2011). Accordingly, the role of human resource is needed to be effective to mitigate the problems with the labor unions. Human resource needs to be responsive with the labor unions because if not, the reputation of the company would be ruined most especially the human resource. Labor unions alarm the management of the human resource for them to wake-up and realize the actions that they need to take for the internal relations with the employees in the company. According to Bamberger and Meshoulam (2000), political and environmental factors must be considered as part of the human resource plan. On the other hand, Rau (2012) has found that human resource could be impacted by the activities of the labor unions. However, the practice of the human resource could be propagated to the Starbucks Working Unions who could not sometimes wait to collaborate and tell their concerns to the management. This could mean that the unions are almost taking their way to take their actions like the roles and the responsibilities of the human resource. With this, Rau (2012) indicated eleven propositions that could be relevant to how the unions could be disseminated and be shared with the functions of the human resource. The first proposition refers to how the government makes the rules and regulations to the unions that could give them an authority to almost do the same thing like the human resource management. The second proposition involves the way how the unions could analyze the profits and the intrications of the company just like the human resource management (Rau, 2012). The third proposition refers to the greater possibility of the employees to tell and voice out their concerns to the unions. This could mean that employees are sometimes more confident to approach the unions compared to the human resource. The fourth proposition refers to the size of the union relative to human resource (Rau, 2012). The fifth proposition refers to how the unions could be exempted from the boundaries of the rules of the company. This could mean that they could easily adopt the ways of human resource because they only depend to the regulations of the government with their philosophical focus of taking their side unto the employees’ rights. The sixth proposition involves how the union’s position, whether national, international, or local, would be given chance to take the human resource way of interacting with the employees. The seventh proposition explained how the unions could stand still as it would be hard for a certain company to take their managerial stand to be prominent against the will of the employees (Rau, 2012). Therefore, unions are more centralized that could not be easily diminished and be dissolved. Furthermore, the eighth proposition enlivens the importance of the company’s centralization as the union could somehow offend the human resource because unions could not be easily controlled and be manipulated. The ninth proposition covers up the strategic terms of unions that are almost comprehensible to the procedural ways of the human resource (Rau, 2012). The tenth proposition refers to the qualifications of the unions who are professionals, who have good scholastic records, good experiences and trainings in which they could have the greatest probability to take their roles and responsibilities same as the human resource management (Rau, 2012). These propositions could serve as the basis of the unions that their concerns should not be denied by the company, especially with regard to the management of the Starbucks company. Hence, human resource of Starbucks should not be worried whenever unions are imposing their rights. However, it would be hard for the human resource how to stand in the middle between the unions and the owners, especially with regard to how veritable human resource can serve the Starbucks company (Gardner, Fischer, & Hunt, 2009). It could be that the best way that the human resource could make and settle the unions and the employer to meet with an agreement in an equal way. Meanwhile, Buller and McEvoy (2012) have also proposed ways for the human resource management based on how it could mitigate the union-employer conflict. They also give some propositions pertaining to more strategic ways that the human resource could implore and exhort. These propositions include how the human resource could create strategies relative to the organizational culture that could keep up the productivity of the employees. These strategies involve the level of competencies that Starbucks company must be aware against its competitors like the other coffee business. Another proposition involves the standards, norms, and the importance of the knowledge, skills, and abilities that must be used as basis to how the performance of the employees could be analytically improved (Buller, & McEvoy, 2011). The human resource of Starbucks could also become more effective through the recommendations of V. Crittenden and W. Crittenden (2008) who implement ways based on how human resource should take a review of the rules that they formulate to its impact to the performance of the employees. It could be that there are some employees who are performing poorly because there are better ways and different ways of strategies that could make them motivated. It could be that the employees have different learning styles in which they should be trained depending on the way they want to learn so that they would truly be motivated. Through this, the employees would already disregard their attention to the low wages as long as the management knows how the employees would love their own work. These things could make the human resource management focus on the empowerment to its way of bringing the people in the company. The human resource management could also impart the knowledge of making the employees become committed with their work as long as they would be satisfied with the kind of task that they could have (Howard & Foster, 1999; Hiltrop, 1996). The human resource managers could provide ways of interacting with the concerns of the employees that could make them cool down not to get into rallies like the unions who usually raise their voices and make some platforms. The manager could give their attention to the things or barriers to proper strategic implementation. This could also lead them to concentrate and focus on the employees’ interest and rights (Buren, Greenwood, & Sheehan, 2011). These things include the following: the top-down senior management style, ambiguous goals and focus, ineffectiveness, inappropriate and inconsistent communication to the team and to the employees, poor cooperation, and inadequate leadership styles of the management (Beer & Eisenstat, 2000). Human resource management must be aware of the changes that they have to make in the systems that they have, especially in Starbucks where employees have a great expectation to what the company had promised to them (Gross, 2007). However, V. Crittenden and W. Crittenden (2008) have proposed ways on which human resource could be improved by focusing on the leverages for the management system. These ways include the actions that must be done by the company, the programs that they need to comply with for the employees, and the system that needs to be more strategic. Policies must be polished, especially when these things could undermine the rights and take an over control to the happiness, health, and freedom of the employees (V. Crittenden & W. Crittenden, 2008). Moreover, interaction, allocation, monitoring, and organizing ways also need to be used as pivotal to the human resource management that could benefit the Starbucks as part of the American society (Chlera, 1994). 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