Strategic HRM Plan Essay Example for Free

Strategic HRM Plan Essay â€Å"Starbucks is the premier roaster and retailer of specialty coffee in the world and has become a truly global brand† (Starbucks Coffee Company, 2011, p. 3). The strategic Human Recourses Management (HRM) plan will cover cultural HR issues, emerging HR issues, and a chart showing a five-year plan. Cultural training, cafà © culture, and culture of service are the three cultural HR issues that will be covered. Cultural training will cover the need for training with diversity for different markets. Cafà © culture is about the â€Å"values and respect diversity and inclusion† of Starbucks. This area is an issue in other countries while in the United States is doing well. The issue of culture of service deals with providing service to customers, but also to employees by way means of benefits. The emerging HR issues that will be covered are employee tuition assistance, evening sales to include alcohol, and customer complaints. Recently Starbucks has provided a new tuition assistance program; this program will be reviewed because of the age of the program it falls under emerging HR issues. The issue with Starbucks going to evening sales to include alcohol requires special licensing and age requirements for employees selling. The final emerging issue is with customer complaints; HR should find a way to review and take action against complaints. The chart will provide a description of the values, mission, and vision of the company and what they mean for the next five years. The table will also tie into how the emerging issues should be handled in the five years. Addressing the cultural and emerging issues will help Starbucks advance as a company and produce outstanding employees that will exceed the expectations of the company. â€Å"Standards will help ensure that our values continue to be reflected in each Starbucks store and business activity. A commitment to integrity, acting honestly and ethically, and complying with the letter and intent of the law are critical to our continued success† (Starbucks Coffee Company, 2011, p. 3). Strategic HRM Plan Cultural Issues Starbucks continues to grow and expand globally. As the company is doing so, it also sees some cultural human resource (HR) issues arise. These cultural HR issues include cultural training, cafà © culture, and culture of service. It is natural for a company to see and experience such issues when expanding into different regions. The human resources department will examine how these issues and cultural considerations affect the division and the strategic plans. As Starbucks grows and expands into new regions, the company is learning that to be successful in other culture they must provide cultural training. This cultural training is part of the company’s strategic plans. As part of the training and development program there is a cultural training for the store front employees, management, upper management, HR, and global communities. This training teaches the employees on how to interact with different cultures. It also teaches the employees of appropriate ways to interact wit h each other so that there is no discrimination. â€Å"To help make our goals become reality, we have integrated diversity and inclusion into the core of our leadership competencies. The goals of the Diversity and Inclusion team include building a diverse workforce, increasing cultural competencies, shaping a culture of inclusion and developing a diverse network of suppliers† (Starbucks, 2014). This consideration affects the company and their strategic plans because it is a continual topic of conversation as the company grows, expands, and new laws come into practice. This conversation then needs to into training and development programs for employees, as well as adding new policy changes and procedures. Starbuck’s employee cultural training also leads into their cafà © cultural training. The Cafà © culture in the United States is spot on. However, the cafà © culture in other countries is not doing so well and has led to the downturn in business. â€Å"I never go into Starbucks; it’s impersonal, the coffee is mediocre, and it’s expensive,’ Ms. Bayod, a 35-year-old masseuse, said as a waiter greeted her by name and quickly bro ught her usual espresso. ‘For us, it’s like another planet.’ Nearly a decade after venturing into Europe, Starbucks is still laboring to lure people like her. Despite engineering a strong turnaround in the United States and growing steadily in Asia, where Starbucks is still a novelty, the  company has struggled here on the Continent that gave birth to cafe and coffeehouse culture† (Alderman, 2012). Due to this issue Starbucks is now embarking on spending over a million dollars to make-over the European locations to be more up-scale and to win over the European coffee drinkers. The organization has also adjusted the blends and beverages to suit the European palate. This has forced Starbucks to realign strategically the European market to meet customer’s wants and needs. Starbucks has continued to realign the culture of its brand image in this region and continues to add new ideas, training, and beverages for the employees in this region. To maintain its high level of customer service Starbucks has started a culture of service initiative for its employees. The organization is committed to providing â€Å"legendary service† to their customers. To do so the company has gone the route of the employee-centered approach. The employee-centered approach includes providing health benefits, tuition benefits, and stock options to even their part-time employees. The guiding principle behind this move is to motivate their employees. The company feels that by motivating their employees they are creating happy, loyal, motivated employees who in turn will be the driving force to their â€Å"legendary service.† Emerging issues Emerging issues provide areas for improvement for Starbucks. Tuition assistance, selling alcohol, and customer complaints are three current emerging issues Starbucks faces. These issues will be discussed based on the issue and how it can be improved. There are around 54 percent of all companies who offer some form of educational reimbursement to their employees (Kurtgleben, 2014). Starbucks announced they would offer partial tuition of about $6,500 for their employees for the first two years of full-time online students at Arizona State University (ASU) Online. Starbucks College Achievement Plan (SCAP) will replace an older plan that was not as generous but was more flexible (Pyke, 2014). The new plan states that any Starbucks employee that works 20 hours a week or more will be able to have their tuition reimbursed beyond what federal financial aid and ASU covers for juniors and seniors (Pyke, 2014). Some critics of the SCAP say that it may not be a real improvement for the 20,000 wo rkers that the school plans to enroll. The old system required that the students take courses that were beneficial towards their jobs at Starbucks. The new system lets the  employees take any of the degrees, of which there are 40, and it does not have to relate to their jobs at Starbucks. The old system only paid $500-$1,000 per calendar year and that depended on the employees’ tenure. The employees could enroll in any accredited college, not just ACU under the old system. The employees could also attend in-person classes which some critics say are important for low-income workers to succeed in their education, (Pyke, 2014). According to Pyke, Starbuck’s plan compares unfavorably with other tuition assistance plans American companies offer. Sara Goldrich-Rab, professor of educational policy studies and sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, found Starbucks new system ‘incredibly problematic’ because they limit its tuition assistance to one university online (Pyke, 2014). The emerging issues for Human Resource on this tuition system would be, is it good that Starbucks only lets the employees enroll in only online degrees with only ACU? Will the new system work well with the low-income employees only being able to take the online degrees instead of in-person classes? Starbucks should go through with their plans of having other universities available for their employees to enroll in and offer in-person classes as well as online classes. Starbucks has expanded its sells to Starbucks evening. Starbucks has been testing the sale of alcohol in their stores after four PM, with a menu that includes light snacks. The benefits to Starbucks are an increase in sales when coffee sales are slow, (Dooley, 2014). However, with these sales come the issues of licensing requirements that are different in every state, possible customer resistance because it is not a family-friendly product, new staff training requirements, and the last, product contagion. There are some people that think that products can transfer their characteristics to each other if they are placed side by side, (Dooley, 2014). So in their way of thinking if Starbucks sells alcohol and it sits next to a non-alcohol product it will be tainted with alcohol. To help keep the contagion issue down Starbucks can separate the alcohol from the non-alcohol products and put the alcohol products into their own coolers, in different parts of the room. There is a page on the Consumer Affairs website where people can go to complain about companies and so forth. There are numerous complaints about Starbucks employees. According to Consumer Affairs Starbucks does not monitor their website so that the issues can be resolved. Human Resources should monitor  these complaints and try to resolve them in some way. In the future if nothing is done someone will bring suit and it might be costly for Starbucks. Human Resource Management should make sure that these employees treat customer s the way they should be treated by retraining and if the bad treatment continues disciplinary actions should be taken. Five year plan chart Starbucks has become well-known ever since the company’s establishment in 1971. Because of Starbucks’ many years of success, the company has now grown throughout the world. For the next five years, Starbucks will develop a strategic plan from the completion of the HRM analysis. Reward programs, training, and job design are the HRM involvements that will assist Starbucks to overcome the issues found from the analysis in order to meet the strategic objectives. The first year of the strategic plan will include the placement of processes along with forming two committees. One committee will take care of the three cultural HR issues the other committee will handle the three emerging HR issues. Years two through five will include continuous monitoring and fact finding through internal and external surveying. Each committee will observe these surveys to where adjustment can be made in a timely matter. The recommendation will be that each committee will meet weekly in the first year of the plan, which could later change to monthly and then quarterly. During this time, any modifications within the process will take place based on the information gathering. The chart below offers the five-year strategic plan, which the company believes needs to be taken in consideration in order to obtain internal and external growth, employee fulfillment, and in meeting up to customer expectations. Starbucks Coffee 2014 – 2019 Strategic Plan Values â€Å"Starbucks reputation for the finest coffee in the world, legendary customer service and the highest integrity is the direct result of our collective efforts† (Starbucks Coffee Company, 2011, p. 3). Mission â€Å"To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time† (Starbucks Coffee Company, 2011, p. 3). Vision Continue in being â€Å"the premier roaster and retailer of specialty coffee† (Starbucks Coffee Company, 2011, p. 4). Cultural/ Emerging Issues Internal/ External Analysis Review Findings Strategic Formulation Strategy Implementation Review and Adjust Cultural Training Cafà © Culture Culture of Service Education Reimbursement Sale of Alcohol Employee Complains Two separate committees will divide into teams. A SWOT analysis will be conducted based on customers, competitors, and industry analysis. The external analysis will examine Starbucks opportunities and threats. The internal will look at the strengths and weaknesses. The two committees, department heads, and stakeholders are involved within a group. Reviewing cultural and emerging issues. Reviewing and adjusting the internal and external findings from the SWOT analysis to then create a strategic formulation. The two teams will define strategies from the findings from the SWOT. Starbucks can create a plan for all issues at all levels within the company creating an outline of what should be done. A description of the steps or processes per issue will provide in accomplishing each objective. Over-all communication and monitoring are important in achieving goals. A timeline will offer when the action plan is to be accomplished. Necessary changes will be made swiftly for the company, employees, and customers. The team will ensure that continuous monitoring within the agreed strategic objectives and aim to start on a monthly basis. Ensuring consistency with Starbucks values, mission, and vision. References Alderman, Liz, 2012, In Europe Starbucks Adjusts Cafà © Culture, Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/31/business/starbucks-tailors-its-experience-to-fit-to-european-tastes.html?pagewanted=all_r=0 Consumer Affairs. Retrieved from: www.consumeraffairs.com/food/starbucks.html Dooley, Roger, 2014. Will Starbucks Alcohol ‘Infect’ Other Products. Retrieved from: www.forbes.com/sites/rogerdooley/2014/04/09/starbucks-alcohol/ http://www.cerdian.com/resources/blogs/human-resources-legislation-blog/starbucks-cap-reinventing-education-assistance.html Pyke, Alan, 2014. Thinkprogress. Critics warn Starbucks Employees To Read Fine Print of New