As a leading firm in the coffee industry, Starbucks has a unique and well-known organizational culture. Starbucks employees are being referred as Baristas and are representative of the company. These employees are famous for their communication skills and ability to take orders accurately.

    The article “How Starbucks’s Culture Brings Its Strategy to Life” written by Paul Leinw and Varya Davidson discussed about Starbuck’s special organizational structure. Starbucks cares about its customers and therefore invested a lot into its Human Resource department since a strong HR department is critical to the success of a quality organizational culture. According to the blog post “Getting the blockages out of the way of great HR” by Don Phin, one of the biggest blockages is bad HR and a fine HR department always understands the importance of a strategic plan. Similarly, Starbucks always focus on its staff training, even during the height of the global financial crisis, Starbucks invested into its HR when other companies were cutting from HR. The success Starbucks achieved in this investment is one of the major factor to its overall success.

    The strategy Starbucks used is similar to Zappos as both companies pay great attention to its Human Resources management. An optimistic atmosphere is created to encourage the staff’s enthusiasm towards working. Starbucks often refers to its employees as partners instead of simply employees to show respect to the staffs. One former Starbucks worker noted that “nobody at Starbucks ever ordered anyone to do anything. It was always: ‘Would you do me a favor?’ Or something similar.” Zappos, on the same hand, has all of its employers and employees sitting in the same office, with same amount of space for every staff to demonstrate equality in the company. It often hosts interesting events to make the working environment engaging as it is significant for companies avoid low-value work from employees referencing Phin. Furthermore, both companies also understand the importance of cultural diversity in the service industry and many of their employees come from distinct cultural background. As a consequence, customers from different background will experience a welcoming environment when purchasing. 

    I personally appreciate this kind of organizational culture because it will increase the employee’s keenness about work, which is crucial to jobs that requires them to communicate to the customers like ordering coffee or sitting in an office picking up phones. Companies that treat its employees well would often attract more applicants and the company will be able to pick out its staffs in a wider range of choices and causing a virtuous cycle.

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References

Getting the Blockages Out of the Way of Great HR. (2017). Human Resources Today. Retrieved 13 November 2017, from http://www.humanresourcestoday.com/?open-article-id=7486368&article-title=getting-the-blockages-out-of-the-way-of-great-hr&blog-domain=hrsherpas.com&blog-title=hrsherpas

How Starbucks’s Culture Brings Its Strategy to Life. (2017). Harvard Business Review. Retrieved 13 November 2017, from https://hbr.org/2016/12/how-starbuckss-culture-brings-its-strategy-to-life

Lesson 2 – Functional areas II. (2017). www.bhs-business.com. Retrieved 13 November 2017, from http://www.bhs-business.com/lesson-2—functional-areas-ii.html

Sebastian. (2017). Starbucks organisational culture. Slideshare.net. Retrieved 13 November 2017, from https://www.slideshare.net/Joelsebastian25/starbucks-organisational-culture

Why Starbucks’ Christmas Cups Are Special This Year. (2017). Fortune. Retrieved 13 November 2017, from http://fortune.com/2016/11/10/starbucks-christmas-cups-2016/