Introduction
Starbucks Coffee, the most significant coffeehouse company, operating in the world today, creates the general perception that it has the capacity and ability to maintain the highest standards of performance explicitly focusing on its ability to support production. One of the key strengths that Starbucks uses to its advantage is its ability to maintain the highest standards through its human resource department. Currently, Starbucks has over 13,000 outlets operating in more than 39 countries around the world, which acts as a clear indication of the significant number of employees working for the company. Thus, this serves as an indication that the company seeks to use its human resource department as one of its notable strengths with the aim of ensuring that it builds performance. The focus of this analysis essay is to evaluate the company's approach to its human resource department to help understand how it manages its employees.
Human Resource Management
For any company to achieve some level of success, one of the critical aspects to consider is the ability for the company to manage its employees, as this acts as a transparent platform from which companies build on their expected success margins. The concept of human resource management can determine the success or failure of a company or organization considering that this seeks to identify customers react depending on their interaction with employees. In the case of Starbucks, the company has been on the forefront in deploying human resources with the sole intention of ensuring that the company maintains its competitive advantage. Thus, this has created the need for having to engage in productive human resource management approaches. Some of the critical paths that the human resource department at Starbucks is taking to help in human resource management include:
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Job Analyses
The human resource department has been involved in conducting job analyses with the sole focus being on trying to understand the roles and responsibilities associated with each job position within the company. Howard Schultz, who is the chairman of the company, has adopted a culture in which the company is involved in conducting job analyses with the sole intention of ensuring that employees retain some form of performance structure (Michelli, 2006). Engaging in job analyses consists of a process where the human resource department lists some of the key responsibilities associated with each employment position. Additionally, the department also provides a list of qualifications expected of employees selected for the different employment positions with the sole focus being on ensuring that the company defines its success margins. Using this approach, Starbucks has been able to maintain the highest standards regarding employees' performance, thus, building on its competitive advantage.
Values and Principles
Since its founding, Starbucks has been able to maintain set-out values and principles that seek to govern how the company operates of reflects on the expectations from the top-level management at the company. One of the critical values that Howard Schultz stresses on is quality of the products delivered to its employees whereby Starbucks expects to maintain the highest standards regarding a variety of its products (Michelli, 2006). From that perspective, it has been essential for the human resource department to work hard with the sole focus being on ensuring that its employees understand these values and principles. For Starbucks, this means that the company would be in a better platform from which to define the company’s competitive advantage in the coffeehouse market.
Selection of Employees
The human resource department at Starbucks is also involved in the process of selection of employees to match some of the set-out goals and expectations that the company has set out for itself (Ordóñez de Pablos, P., & Lytras, 2008). During the selection process of employees, the company focuses on three fundamental principles that determine how it progresses from the perspective of its employees. These principles are adaptability, reliability and the capability to work in team settings. The department reflects on these principles from the standpoint that it may be in a position from which to determine whether employees match the set company expectations. The long-term effect that this has had is that it has helped towards promoting efficiency for the employees especially in their bid to working in teams. Ultimately, this builds on the expected performance standards to help define overall performance structures associated with the company.
Building a Top Management Team
Management is one of the critical structures of performance for any given company or organization, as it seeks to determine how companies rely on their expected platforms from which to define performance (Brewster, Chung, & Sparrow, 2016). In the case of Starbucks, the company has been involved in a process where it seeks to build a top-notch management team that would attempt to determine whether the company reflects on some its key expectations. The management team created focuses much of its attention on its employees concentrate on whether the company's employees are in real positions from which to reflect on set out values and principles. The critical outcome associated with the company's ability to build a top management team has been the fact that Starbucks has been able to maintain some form of competitive advantage.
Compensation and Welfare of Employees
One of the significant elements that promote the success of an organization entails the benefit and reward strategies implemented for the employees. According to Yahya & Goh (2002), proper compensation strategies help an organization to acquire and retain qualified employees that are in a position to increase the productivity of the company. In this case, Starbucks has made proper investments in the human resource management to ensure that adequate compensation and reward strategies are implemented in a bid to enhance the overall welfare of the employees. The human resources management researches different aspects as part of ensuring that that compensation strategy implemented is in a position to provide the employees with the appropriate working conditions that are relevant in enhancing individual and organizational productivity. The company ensures that the employees enjoy various benefits as part of the compensation for their work, which acts measure to motivate employees.
Planning
Planning is an essential aspect of any given organization as it helps to lay down the objectives and the strategies that would be used in the accomplishment of the said goals and objectives. In Starbucks, planning is critical as it involves management function that helps in assessing the environmental aspects that are responsible for the achievement of goals and objectives of the company. The company focuses on ensuring that the planning process has the right people who are in a position to execute the plans and practical strategies to achieve the programs effectively. Providing that the right people are in the right places helps to ensure that tasks are efficiently implemented to ensure that the company is in a position to undertake operations effectively. The human resource in the company capitalizes on assessing the planning process by providing that the plans can achieve the set goals and objectives upon proper execution.
Training of Employees
Training is one of the critical elements in the human resource management, which helps Starbucks to experience growth and success in its significant operations (Camps, J., & Luna ‐ Arocas, 2012). The human resource of the company has invested in enhancing the training process of employees with the intention of increasing productivity and providing them with the platform of being more competitive. The human resource of the Company undertakes various options of the training process to ensure a comprehensive approach that helps in earning creating an avenue for the efficiency of operations. The first training option entails training new applicants in the company, which is a training procedure that capitalizes on teaching essential organizations aspects such as goals, vision, rules, and regulation among others. The second option entails training the employees on the new trends in the industry regarding technological changes and advancements. Lastly, the employees undergo pieces of training that require new roles and responsibilities in cases of promotion to ensure that they catch up with new responsibilities.
Conclusion
In summary, Starbucks, being one of the largest coffeehouse companies in the world today, attributes its success to its human resources. The company reflects on the fact that having a competent human resource department has helped in building that valid position from which the company can maintain some form of terms performance structure. The principal outcome is that this has not only supported towards boosting the company's performance but has also worked towards ensuring that the company can build on its competitive advantage. The long-term effect that having a competent human resource department at Starbucks has had is that it has helped towards ensuring that the company can maintain some form of performance expectations based on its values and principles. In other words, Starbuck's human resource department supports some structured advantage for the company regarding building performance standards.
References
Brewster, C., Chung, C., & Sparrow, P. (2016). Globalizing human resource management . Routledge.
Camps, J., & Luna ‐ Arocas, R. (2012). A matter of learning: How human resources affect organizational performance. British Journal of Management , 23 (1), 1-21.
Michelli, J. A. (2006). Starbucks experience . Tata McGraw-Hill Education.
Ordóñez de Pablos, P., & Lytras, M. D. (2008). Competencies and human resource management: implications for organizational competitive advantage. Journal of Knowledge Management , 12 (6), 48-55.
Yahya, S., & Goh, W. K. (2002). Managing human resources toward achieving knowledge management. Journal of knowledge management , 6 (5), 457-468.
