Starbucks was established in 1971 by three local businessmen to

sell high quality whole beans coffee. In 1981 when Howard Schultz
visited the store he plan to build a strong company and expand high
quality coffee business with the name of Starbucks.
Starbucks air is to provide high quality of coffee to its consumer and
aim to achieve product innovation, retail expansion and provide
service quality for long term.

Starbucks is one of the best known and fastest growing companies in

the world. Set up in 1971, in Seattle, the company grew slowly
initially, but expanded rapidly in the late 1980s and the 1990s. By the
early 2000s, there were nearly 9,000 Starbucks outlets across the
world and the company's eventual retail target was to open 30,000
outlets. It was widely believed that the company's success and rapid
growth could be attributed largely to its committed and motivated
workforce.

Starbucks relied on its baristas and other frontline staff to a great

extent in creating the 'Starbucks Experience' which differentiated it
from competitors. Therefore the company paid considerable attention
to the kind of people it recruited. Starbucks' recruitment motto was
"To have the right people hiring the right people.
Human resource management

For company’s success employees are vital. They are public face of
company and their hands passes through every single dollar of sales. 
Howard Schultz thinks that employees can break or make a company. If an
employee has a positive interaction with customer, definitely customer will
be come back. Vice versa, customer is gone. It’s important for Starbucks to
hire and recruit the right person train well, motivate and retain them.
Therefore, the company should give satisfying jobs, appropriate work
schedules, a positive work environment and fair compensation and
benefits. To gain competitive advantage these activities are essential of
Starbucks’s strategy to deploy human resources. Human resource
management (HRM)is the process an organization takes actions to attract,
develop, and retain quality employees. (“Human resource
management,”1997.
To develop HR plan, HR managers that knowledgeable with jobs that
Starbucks needs performed. Information about a given job is organized by
Starbucks through a job analysis to identify the skills, task and
responsibilities that are require as well as the abilities and knowledge
needed to perform it.

Selection of Employee

Employee Selection is essential as for hiring the right men. Effective

selection is evaluated by their skills and qualifications. Effective selection
can only be done when requirement meets the line. By picking best
applicant for the job, the organization will get good performance of
employees. By employing the right applicant, the company saves money
and time. During selection procedure, proper screening of candidates takes
place, testing for the entire potential candidate who applied for the given
job.

To have the right people hiring the right people.” was Starbucks’ recruitment motto.
The aspects that Starbucks looks for in employees are like adaptability,
reliability and the capability of team working. Starbucks often specified the
qualities that looked for in employees upfront in its job positions, which
allowed prospective employees to evaluate themselves to a certain extent 
Training of Employee
Training is essential for organizational development and success. With
proper training, an employee will be more efficient and productive.
There are 4 training basics:
1.Training is given to new applicant. It teaches them with basic
organizational knowledge. Such as, goals, rules and regulations, vision and
etc.
2. The existing employees are retaught to gather their knowledge.
3. If any change technology, training is given to handle with those changes.
4. Trainings are given when employees get promoted to share the
responsibilities.
Starbucks’ vice president for human resources used some simple
guidelines.
Every partner or barista hired for a retail job has to undergo intensive
training before working. The training class topics even include coffee
history and customer service. Their workshop motto is “Brewing the Perfect
Cup.” Basic Starbucks retail skills are taught too. Barista are even taught to
satisfy customer special requirements. Everyone is trained and three
guidelines for interpersonal skills: (1) Increase self-esteem, (2) Always
attentive and (3) Ask for assistance.
Trainees have to attend intensive classes. Their intensive training consists
of knowledge of store operations, procedures, supervising people.
Qualification to be a trainee must have experience or at least store
managers. Part of their main objectives was to enforce the company’s
values, principles, and even knowledge of Starbucks history and coffee.
Before every retail Starbucks opens, they will start recruiting 8 to 10 weeks
before opening. An experience team will be sent to newly opened stores to
train the employees. 
Compensation and welfare of the employees

Howard Schultz always thinks about his employees and partner. Different
types of monitory and non monitor benefits programs are introduced by him
in order motivate the employees so they can offer full to the Starbucks. Part
time and full time staff are enjoying the benefits. A flexibly, work-life
balance, health insurance, vision insurance and dental is being offered to
his employee. He offered the elderly care program for their parents and
company shares with the name of ‘Bean Stock’ to employee. CUP Fund is
a program that helps employees with financial support during times of
hardship or crisis and a Total Pay package which offers discretionary
bonuses. To motivate the employee these incentives were design so they
can satisfy customer and Starbucks. It also helps Starbucks to retain
competent, high performing employees and high employee satisfaction
rate. Schultz’s rationale was that they will treat your customers well if you
treat your employees.

HUMAN RESOURCE PRACTICES OF STARBUCKS PROVIDING

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE :
There are many small companies developed to larger and famous
companies in this worldwide, they do not rely on luck but they have their
own strategy to success .Starbucks is growing in the international market.
When people see a logo which is green and has a twin-tailed mermaid,
what goes into their mind? Those people definitely will think of Starbucks
due to the company is becoming a leading global company by making a
difference in people’s lives all around the world.
The management of Starbucks apply the philosophy of the CEO, Howard
Schultz, which is “treat people like family and they will be loyal and give
their all” that becomes one of the factors which leads the company
success. Not only full time staff he introduced benefits, but also to those
part time staff. To motivate the employees to work hard for the company to
succeed, the employees are offered with flexible work schedule, health
insurance, and treat the employees with respect. The company shares
offered to its employee by the CEO with the name of ‘Bean Stock’. With
these benefits offered, the employees give the best service to the
customers because customers are the important asset of the company by
providing a training and development program for employees to fulfill the
requirement of their customers.
The second factor leading to the company to succeed is the company has
innovation to create new types of coffee or new drinks to attract more
customers, increase the company’s profit and allow the company to have
an upper hand in the market. The benefits given to the staff cause the staff
to give everything to the company including their innovation. As an
example, the latest product of Starbucks in the market is salted caramel
mocha. Starbucks not only sell coffee and juice blend, they sell food which
are pastries and cakes to allow the customers to have some tea break.

KEY ROLE OF HR TO PROVIDE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE IS AS

FOLLOWS:
Starbucks employees play an important role to success. “We built the
Starbucks brand first with our people, not with consumers. We believed the
best way to meet and exceed the expectations of our customers was to hire
and train great people, we invested in employees.”(Schultz,
1986).Starbucks provides welfare for the employees. “Schultz’s rationale
was that if you treat your employees well, they will treat your customers
well.
Hence, in order to make the company success, Starbucks offers all full-time
and part-time employees to enjoy the benefits such as high wages, full
health care. Moreover, Howard Schultz offers company shares to
employees and elderly care program for their parents. Lastly, a program
called the CUP Fund which helps employees with financial assistance for
the one who are in financial crisis and even bonuses. These incentives are
used to motivate employees to treat customer and company right as the
company treats them well. The pros of this management using by
Starbucks is to help to reduce Starbucks’s employee turnover. Starbucks
employees tend to be young and healthy which keeps the cost of health
benefits low. Due to the low-partner turnover, the training cost has been
reduced and it will indirectly increase the income of the company. 
Starbucks also uses Human Resource Planning (HRP) to attract, develop
and retain quality employees. The organization employs talented
employees through selection process. The selection process consists of
certain steps. For Starbucks, the most essential part of evaluating a
candidate is through interview. The aspects that employers looks within the
employees are characteristic, personality, confidential, expectation of
interviewer, knowledge of the company history in the coffee shop industry,
work ethic and so on. With this interview, employers are able to understand
more or knowing sets of skills of each individual candidate. With this
Human Resource Planning (HRP), it aids the company to prepare ahead of
time for vacancies rather than solving in a complicated manner when an
employee decided to resign unexpectedly.

This prepares Starbucks for future opportunities such as business growth

and expansion. Another pro of Human Resource Planning (HRP) is having
career-development. Identifying potential capable company leaders,
company will help them to grow. For an instance, Starbucks has a program
called “New Partner Orientation and Immersion”. What it does is giving an
extensive program to increase the quality of Starbucks core values; build
knowledge of business and retail operations; create awareness about
Starbucks benefits programs and introduce partners to their key internal
stakeholders
 Starbucks HR manager (INDIA)
NABAMITA BANERJEE