Self-development of Starbucks

Challenges

Starbucks has a grand plan for the Chinese market. It has made a clear commitment to China and plans to invest heavily to tap the full potential of the market. "over time, there will be thousands of stores in China," Starbucks President HowardSchultz said in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal. " This will be a big step for the 376 stores currently operating in China. Although staffing and store management will undoubtedly be a challenge for any market, Starbucks has to face the problem of lack of management and retail experience while Starbucks is growing rapidly in China.

Hiring a large number of experienced managers to run the retail business is not a good choice. Starbucks has a strong and unique corporate culture, which means that the overall improvement of internal managers will benefit other employees and even the company as a whole. Starbucks believes that their investment in human resources will help their employees develop, improve their skills and accumulate experience. They are seeking a long-term relationship with their employees to ensure the future development of the enterprise.

In early 2010, Starbucks China embarked on a new project at the company level to protect its rapid business development by defining and training the necessary talent. Their goal is to develop a comprehensive and well-structured programme to develop talents to ensure sustainable future development planning. The project focuses on the retail business, where there is the greatest demand for talent.

For regional managers

In order to recruit talents, they decided to introduce new mechanisms, which focused on management potential based on competence and behavior, rather than simple external performance.

Choose Aon Hewitt to work together to complete this project. AngelYu, HR Manager of Starbucks Greater China, said, "the most critical reason why we choose Aon is to rely on the expertise of the project leader. I think he has an up-to-date understanding of the market, customer demand and retail talent trends. Secondly, we also know that Aon has developed talent training programs for other retail enterprises, and I believe Aon has accumulated a wealth of experience in similar development projects. Third, we are satisfied with the flexibility of consultants and project responsibilities. They can always listen to our voices instead of bossing us around. They are trying to understand unique needs and expectations. So we ran in very well from the beginning, and my team worked very happily with Aon, resulting in a perfect chemical reaction. "

Solution

The first step in the project is to nominate and select high-potential candidates from Starbucks' talent pool. To do this, they must first understand who and how many people have the potential to move up to the next level of management in this talent pool. They want to identify deficiencies in their career development by assessing the potential of each employee.

Hire Aon Hewitt to help them evaluate potential candidates. At the beginning of the project, Aon first examined the global leadership model and identified some key elements that should be integrated into the evaluation dimension. After that, the consultants asked senior managers about the challenges they faced at work. Based on these studies and interviews, a necessary competency model is developed, including cognitive ability and expected behavior.

The competency model then becomes the basis for the development of different scenarios and business cases in the evaluation scenario. It is also because consultants are familiar with Starbucks' unique corporate environment and culture that they are able to customize two customized scenarios for employees who are about to be promoted to new positions for their special challenges.

Once the competency model is established and the materials of the assessment center are ready, Aon consultants can help members of the Starbucks project team evaluate and assist them in evaluation discussions. This includes selecting qualified evaluators for the project and training them on how to evaluate and assist. Consultants can even show Starbucks evaluators how to prepare personal reports for each employee who takes part in the review. Upon completion of the evaluation, the consultant will also assist Starbucks in feedback and communication with each participant.

Result

Through this pilot project, managers can fully understand the process of the evaluation center. With the rich experience of Aon Hanway, employees of Starbucks Human Resources Department and employees who are trained to conduct behavior assessment in a systematic and professional manner also benefit.

As AngelYu said, "the most important thing is that we have established our own evaluation center framework." The project does help us to establish a system that will enable us to assess potential development opportunities more accurately in the future. Secondly, it helps internal experts to evaluate and promote talent development. "

Next step

Starbucks admits that the whole development process has been very long. AngelYu also recognizes that there is still a lot of work to be done. "it's not that we just evaluated it and finished it," she told us. Now we know the advantages and disadvantages of each individual. The next step is to develop a personal development plan for these employees. We need to help the managers and employees of these employees develop their abilities through on-the-job learning and training. We need to get our business manager to help our employees develop. We need reinforcers to develop culture, and we need to give them the right way to do this. This is the focus of our future work. This is only the first step in our entire talent plan. "

China Coffee Trading Network: www.gafei.com