Starbucks is investing into the future of the company through providing professional training opportunities to its staff. In partnership with Ashridge Business School, the British division of the global coffee chain is to offer its employees a range of training opportunities for amplifying their working experience and earning a range of NVQ qualifications as well as management skills to be further used in their work at Starbucks.
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Starbucks UK employees will be encouraged to enroll next summer. First, the company will invite shift supervisors to enlist for the job trainings, and later it will offer district managers and other business leaders an opportunity to join the project. The MBA style programs will be running at Ashridge, which ensures the high quality of the educational process. Starbucks is also launching the “Best Barista” recruitment program aimed at store managers who will be trained to choose baristas with ‘Starbucks nature’ and the ‘green volunteering’ views among the candidates.
“When we were devising our new strategy, we asked our partners what mattered to them and they told us loud and clear that they wanted the opportunity to build a career at Starbucks and gain transferable skills. It’s good news for our customers who want to see familiar faces, but it’s also the right thing to do at a time when coffee shops are providing so many jobs.The stores that are the best run have the best teams. Investing in [our] people will make for a better customer experience and makes good business sense. We’re trying to build a company that balances corporate social responsibility with profitability,” stated Darcy Willson-Rymer, Managing Director, Starbucks UK & Ireland.
The company, which now has 9,000 staff, believes that the recently adopted strategy will improve the process of hiring new staff and training the current employees, which will result in decreasing the employee turnover. Starbucks also started a Partner Fund to encourage its employees to be proactive and request for personal projects like volunteering or educational programs. Telegraph.co.uk reports that they also can receive some funding for their initiatives unrelated to coffee business or work.