STARBUCKS PERFORMANCE PLANNING
Recruitment Growth, Company Performance, and Work-life Balance
The recruitment process is a pivotal strategy for Starbucks to accomplish its objectives in
finding the right kinds of personnel to carry out its mission and business strategy. Fortunately
for the company, it had experienced periods of accelerated growth, opening up more than four
stores and adding 200 employees each day until 2007 (Noe et al., 2010). With such a rapid
growth rate, however, it had to assimilate those new hires quickly into the company to meet its
growth goals. In the process the company made hasty decisions and cluttered new stores with
merchandise whilst losing focus on coffee. Starbucks’ CEO Howard Schultz and other top
executives did not earn bonuses in 2008 as a result of the company’s subsequent poor
performance. According to Noe et al. (2010), Schultz asked the board of directors that year to
decrease his 1.2 million in base pay to $1; the company’s new corporate jet went up for sale.
Starbucks closed 300 underperforming stores and laid-off over 6,700 employees. Starbucks
also announced that it would no longer be matching employees’ contributions to their 401 (k)
retirement plans.
However, in spite of store closures and tough times, Starbucks has remained a highly regarded
company to work for, reaching in 2013 number 94 on Fortune’s 100 best companies to work
for (“100 Best Companies,” n.d.). Its continued success arguably is due to its successful
administration of human resources management, denoting all the efforts that Starbucks
undergoes to recruit, develop, and retain its employees. Its recruitment strategies involve
strategic human resource planning as well as utilizing “social recruitment” online via its career
site to target its hiring audience. Once hired, keeping or retaining valuable human capital
implies evaluating performance regularly, encouraging success, providing benefits and the
ability to undertake the necessary actions to keep them within the organization, including
promoting work-life balance (Noe et al., 2010).
Work-life balance is the concept of balancing one’s working life with one’s health and well
being. In general, it can be a difficult endeavor, particularly in those whom feel overworked
and who find it challenging to juggle the demands of their job with the rest of their lives. To
help curb job burnout, it is useful for an individual, regardless of where they work, to employ
tactics such as building downtime into one’s schedule, dropping activities that deplete time and
energy, exercising, and seeking relaxation strategies (Uscher, 2012). Companies and
organizations can also play a critical role in creating meaningful work-life balance, Starbucks
being a prime example. While one estimate is that less than 30 percent of part-time workers in
the United States have paid sick leave or paid time off, at Starbucks part-time employees are
eligible for paid sick leave or paid time off if they work 240 hours a quarter (Noe et al., 2010).
Human resource management in general has to serve as an internal adviser, and be viewed as
open-minded, fair, professional and efficient. Human resources must recruit, develop, and
retain employees who possess the skills and vision. It must seek the opportunity to make
positive changes to compensation, benefits, and reward and recognition programs and
additionally provide training and development opportunities to its employees (Mathis &
Jackson, 2009); it must promote work-life balance in the manner Starbucks has done.
STARBUCKS EMPLOYEE DEVELOPMENT
