Starbucks Approach to Staffing and Scheduling
Starbucks has a strong legacy of progressive and responsible employment.
Our 160,000 partners (employees) in the U.S. represent the diverse communities they serve. They include working parents, military spouses, students and even those young people for whom putting on the green apron represents their first job – all working to achieve their own personal and career goals.
Our role is to help them achieve those goals. That’s why among other benefits, partners who work 20 hours or more a week receive access to:
- Healthcare coverage
- A debt-free college degree through the Starbucks College Achievement Plan
- Equity in the form of Starbucks stock
We also know many of our partners are balancing outside obligations and interests. Scheduling must take an individual approach, allowing for both the consistency and flexibility that are important to each of them. Our store managers make great efforts each week to balance the needs of our business, their stores, and the diverse needs of our partners against the normal seasonality we see throughout the year as customers shift their behaviors and purchases. To get this right, partners and their managers work together to create schedules that are predictable, consistent, and balance the different needs of every partner.
Over the last two years, we have made significant scheduling improvements. Our established principles include:
- All partners are asked to provide their availability and preferred schedules when they are hired
- All partners are provided a good faith estimate of the hours they will receive
- We do our best to provide stability and consistency in schedules, and will continue to introduce better scheduling capability for store managers to ensure more continuity of schedules
- We post schedules at least 14 days in advance, posting current week plus two weeks
- We do not nor have we ever had on-call scheduling
- Our store managers are required to schedule partners with at least eight hours between closing and opening shifts
- We have a dedicated support team for partners to ask questions or share concerns about scheduling and other policies
- We work to help transfer partners who are experiencing commutes longer than an hour to a store closer to their homes
Although we are not perfect, Starbucks has decades of experience working with tens of thousands of partners to create flexible and consistent schedules. It is a cornerstone of our business philosophy to exceed the expectations of our partners, knowing that our partners will be inspired to create a deeper customer connection and an elevated Starbucks Experience for everyone.
Simply put: Partners are at the heart of our collective success.