Employment and Starbucks

In 1971, three coffee fanatics – Gerald Baldwin, Gordon Bowker and Ziev Siegel founded Starbucks in Seattle, Washington (Moon & Quelch, 2006). Howard Schultz, who is now the CEO, joined the marketing team. He made a trip to Italy and became obsessed with the idea of how people were drinking coffee in the cafes. A few years later Howard Schultz bought Starbucks from the three founders and started to expand the coffee brand. Starbucks is the leader in the coffee industry and is one of the most recognized brands in the world. Now let us take a deeper look into the Starbucks organization. The 21st century has brought new trends in the labor force composition that surely affects human resource management (HRM). Starbucks has to deal with these changes in order to make their employees happy and to run their business successfully. One of the examples of a trend that affects HRM is an aging workforce. By now the worker age range of 45 to 64 has grown dramatically and continues to grow (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart & Wright, 2010, p. 32). Starbucks is following the trend. For instance, the company has recently purchased the workshop that is called Aging Workforce (PR Newswire, 2010). Another example of a trend that puts a big impact on the workforce is an increased diversity level. Starbucks understands the importance of a diverse workforce for the company future and “reflects a comparable dedication to diversity as an essential component” in the way they conduct business (Starbucks, 2010). Starbucks states that they hire people regardless to the applicants’ race, national origin, gender, and any other bias (Starbucks, 2010). For example, 28% of Senior Officers (Senior Vice President and above) are female and 22% are people of color (Starbucks Annual Report, 2010). The next change affecting the workforce is that companies have begun empowering their employees. Employees are given “responsibility and authority to make decisions

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