Essay: Employee’s perception of Starbucks’ company values vs espoused values

Introduction
Starbucks is the largest worldwide coffee chain and retailer with 27,000 locations and 238,000 employees. Established in 1971 by Howard Shultz, their values and mission to “inspire and nurture the human spirit, one person, one cup, and one neighbor at a time” continues to promise their customers The Starbucks Experience. This includes a friendly and warm atmosphere to create the perfect ‘third place’ between home and work. I can attest it has fulfilled its’ promise to me as a customer, as I spend an average of 10 hours a week studying there. However, the culture employees experience is quite different. Starbucks prides themselves on the values they uphold for their employees across all stores. They offer incentives such as free Spotify subscriptions, a tuition exemption for Arizona State University, a flexible schedule and they even give employees stock in the company, making them partners.
For this essay, I’ll focus on the busiest Starbucks location in McAllen, Texas. There are 20 employees consisting of 1 manager, 4 shift managers, and 15 baristas who work different shifts. Using information from personal surveys, phone interviews, and personal experience, this paper will delve into the inconsistencies between the partner’s perceived values and Starbucks’ espoused values. First, I’ll explain the employee’s perception of the company values through communication rules and rituals, then I’ll compare them to the espoused values, and conclude with my findings and recommendations to better the organizational culture.
Perceived Values
I surveyed and spoke with three employees – Jxxxx, Nxxxxxx, and Rxxxx, – at the local Starbucks. I personally know Jxxxx and Nxxxxxx from high school, so their experiences are credible and unbiased. The employees were optimally chosen because they’ve worked at and experienced the Starbucks organizational culture for over a year.
Overall, Jxxxx, Nxxxxxx, and Rxxxx’s experiences at Starbucks line up with similar thoughts, feelings, events. They don’t feel connected to Starbucks as a brand because they simply don’t care for their values and mission. They are there to work and get paid. As Rxxxx put it, “This is a job to carry me over into my next phase in life.” Furthermore, when asked what aspects they liked of being an employee, the three responses consisted of measurable benefits such as: cash tips, paid vacations, and control over schedule. The organizational culture for this location has derived from the lack of connection employees feel between themselves and the company.
The first overarching cultural manifestation of this Starbucks location is a blend of communication rules and its effects on member assimilation. I’ll refer to the manner in which coworkers typically speak to each other as ‘bar-talk.’ Bar-talk consists of crude jokes, bad humor, and picking on baristas’ mistakes. This makes the employee environment sort of cliquey, thus members don’t feel welcome and won’t know how to fully integrate themselves into the team. All three interviewees actively participate in this type of communication around coworkers, but never around their manager.
The way a new partner is introduced to their coworkers plays a big role in how they fully integrate into the team. To further understand, it is imperative to know the training process. There are a very loose set of training guidelines from corporate which simply focus on a person learning to make the adequate drinks efficiently. New employees shadow an established worker for a week to know how to take orders and make drinks. In that week, new employees are at the mercy of the trainer; if they aren’t trained properly, they’ll make costly mistakes and if they aren’t properly introduced to their team, they won’t make a good impression. It doesn’t help how the pre-existing members tend to be judgmental of new members. As Rxxxx puts it, “New members are seen as a new target to pick on.”
Another overarching manifestation of culture in this Starbucks is the rituals. Starbucks holds one annual event for store coworkers to socialize outside of the workplace. The first is a convention called Open Forum where partners of all store locations from each regional area gather to give company feedback. It’s also an opportunity to meet with other employees and share experiences. Although the company does this to gather feedback and network, employees could care less. Jxxxx dreads going to the conference, stating “I’d rather be at work than sitting here waiting for the executives to lecture us.” The other annual ritual is a competition for highest grossing location in the South Texas region. Starbucks offers the stores an opportunity to win a $2,000 company event of their choosing. Since the McAllen location I surveyed is the busiest in its vicinity, this would be an easy challenge. The employees, on the other hand, aren’t usually motivated by this and tend to disregard it. Jxxxx stated, “Our manager just puts up the flyer on the board in case [the district manager] shows up, but we really don’t care.”
Overall, the absence of proper new member orientation and introduction shows a lack of emphasis on new member introductions and could lead to problems such as trouble amongst coworkers or poorly made product. The rituals begin to foster a sense of connection amongst the baristas, but ultimately, it’s not enough. The cultural indicators show the organizational culture is poorly motivated and hard to assimilate.
Espoused Values
Starbucks prides itself on being a business with its customers and employees at its core. Both the value and mission statement show how Starbucks devotes itself to the people. The value statement opens with, “…our partners, our coffee and our customers at our core…”, while their mission statement reads, “To inspire and nurture the human spirit.” They strive to provide an excellent experience for the customer and the partners. As a regular customer at the McAllen location, I frequently witness the employees having fun with coworkers while making drinks. They offer great customer service whether they face a wrong order or a rude customer. While the partners are efficient at their job, the values and intentions exemplified are inconsistent those of the company.
Firstly, the lack of connection between partners and the company doesn’t align with the statements they make having their employees at their core. While Starbucks does offer generous benefits, they overlooked the importance of proper assimilation and how socialization affects the workplace. It is important to note since Starbucks is a global retailer, strategies or implementations are not successful for every store. If they have taken steps to correct this issue, it was not successful at this location. The annual rituals show Starbucks is attempting to have some sort of camaraderie between store locations, but ultimately, it’s a strategy to generate more sales.
Secondly, the most notable sentiment of the three employees is how they view this job as temporary until something better comes along. This is a key issue in how employees interact with the company and show their values. If they don’t see this as a long-term job/career, the employees are not going identify with the company values as much as they would with a more serious job. Jxxxx and Rxxxx did not choose to work at Starbucks because they want to “create a culture of warm and belonging,” they want a paycheck. Nxxxxxx was the only one to hint at an alternative reason to work at the company. “[I want] to polish up on how I talk to people and become confidante in talking to anyone…” Upon further questioning, she stated she ended up picking this job for its proximity to her home.
Conclusion & Recommendations
A company as large as Starbucks is bound to have inconsistencies in its organizational culture and the company values. The main problem big brands face in creating strategies to improve is that not all solutions work for every individual store. Unfortunately, the culture of this Starbucks location does not align with the espoused company values. It should be noted results could vary between Starbucks locations or season of employees.
The dissonance between the company and the employee stems from the overarching issue: employees, particularly baristas, see this job as intermittent. Most of Starbuck’s retail employees are young adults looking for a job to make ends meet, not a long-term career. The misalignment of values could lead to careless mistakes and a bad reputation for Starbucks. If employees aren’t proud of their workplace and don’t value the same things, they aren’t going to have the company’s best interests at heart. They will take actions based on their own demand, and not think about the repercussions of the company. Furthermore, the lack of proper assimilation into the work team further creates negative feelings towards the company. Employees in this location are not receiving the people-centered environment Starbucks states it creates.
To address the lack of proper assimilation, the implementation of a New Partner orientation program will facilitate the transition of new members to feel included and increase productivity. This can include a proper introduction to every member of the staff, a group training session in which the new member will learn the required information from different viewpoints, and it will create a closer bond between the staff. The lack of rituals can easily be improved by adding a company retreat, or a regional sport in which every store can participate and compete. Implementing the two strategies will not only improve employee’s mindsets on the company, but it will also give the workplace a sense of community. In the long run, employees will feel like they are a part of something bigger, and that will shift they exemplify the company values for the better.