Stakeholders Relationships and Company Performance
Employees are valuable assets to the company as they determine the fate of the company success. The management of any business needs to treat their employees in the best way possible so that they remain loyal to the enterprise. In the marketing department, the employees in this department are vital as they sell the image of the company to the public. Personnel in this department have a direct interaction with customers to the organization. Marketing and hospitality tend to be similar as customer loyalty depends on the treatment they receive when they interact with the company employees or agents. In addition to the services and the work, they offer the company, their interactions with business customers creates personal relationships that are lead to customer loyalty. This paper analyzes Starbucks Coffee Company, its interactions with employees and the impact of these interactions on company performance.
Starbucks remain relevant in the market due to the committed employees to working for the company due to the kind of treatment it gives to its employees. All the stakeholders to this company remain revenant and more so the employees for they make the company operational. The company has experienced growth due to the efforts the staff offer for the enterprise. The success of the company is attributed to the commitment of its employees. In the Fortune 500 company ranking, this year Starbucks is position 94, which is an improvement (Kim et al., 2012 p. 6). The reason that the Fortune magazine gave to the continued growth in the business performance is that the firm has been providing benefits to its employees. The management also offers stock rewards at twenty hours per week. There is also room for advancement regarding promotion and skill progression. The management at Starbucks is aware that employees are not machines. Rewarding their employees remain a priority. This has led to the commitment of staff of the company to their duties.
Employee involvement is a behavior that shows that the workers are doing their duties at their will and ready to obtain tangible results. They take the work as theirs hence any effort counts. They offer the best for the company. Through the excellent relationship between employees and management, the laborers remain performing and adding value to the business. The stakeholders that interact with the company directly include employees, customers and the farmers who supply Starbucks with coffee grains. Making these stakeholders feel valued will, in turn, make them feel that indeed the company is their property. According to Taylor, employee motivation makes them feel appreciated hence they take their job as theirs offering the best (Schunk and Zimmerman, 2012, p. 91). The Maslow’s hierarchy of needs clearly states that human beings have needs that are never satisfied but making some effort to motivate and satisfy them to some extent will make them behave in a manner that they love what they are doing.
The staff to Starbucks popularly referred to as store partners by the management are the internal stakeholders of the company. Their behavior of connecting with the customer during their encounter with their clients has significantly contributed to the success of Starbucks. They feel that this company is a great place to work because the company not only takes care of their well-being but it also cares about the environment they live (www.starbucks.com 2015, p. 13). Communication has led to the good relations the behavior our customers are demonstrating. Management theories like the classical management theory do not allow incorporation of the workers ideas in decision-making. The classical management theory prioritizes production by using employees without rewarding their efforts. This theory if followed will demoralize the efforts of employees hence reducing their commitment to their jobs.
Through employee commitment to work for the company, Starbucks has been growing and expanding its business to different parts of the world. When the company started operating back in 1971, there existent one store that was supplying its products but currently, the outlets are enormous across 55 countries in the world. When employees are committed to the job they are doing, they sell the company image to the other relevant stakeholders, customers. This helps them the business grow in terms of profits because each day they will bring new customers (Schunk and Zimmerman, 2012, p.95). Their interaction with the society allows them to have lasting relations, as all they have to say is positive about the company. Telling other people about the benefits they get from the enterprise, and the kind of treatment they get attracts people to admire working in that company. They will allow the flow of the same message to other people and always associate themselves with that company either by seeking employment there or buying company products. The commitment of employees for the company has also reduced the number of absenteeism in the enterprise. This ensures that performance is reliable as there are no incidences where some operations are failing because of absenteeism.
The commitment demonstrated by the staff of Starbucks may be associated with the reward of their extrinsic needs and the enabling working environment created by the business. Intrinsic employee motivation is another behavior that affects the operation of the firm (Nelson, 2013, p. 8). At Starbucks, there is the culture of training and learning among employees. The company invests extensively in training employees so that they do what is expected of them. The behavior of employees being ready to learn has enabled them to acquire the best knowledge and skills. The experience there includes training on how they would undertake activities in the company. It allows these people to interact and share ideas in an effort to create new products and does their operation in a better way.
The management is always open to all stakeholders and helps them to perform. Through communication, all the information that the company wants to pass to its employees is conveyed very fast allowing them to act before things go wrong. The communication system in the company between different stakeholders is indeed the best. It allows smooth flow of information among the various people. With a good flow of information, both business partners, customers, and all other stakeholders see transparency in management. It makes job fun at Starbucks. With the necessary information flowing smoothly, the operation will be smooth and less chaos will be evident only because people will ensure they do what they are supposed to do without close supervision.
The other behavior that has affected Starbucks Company is the Green Apron behavior. At work, partners of the company are always in their green apron attire. They are ever welcoming. This allows them to create personal relationships with customers. This behavior creates customer loyalty as they felt most satisfied and taken as precious. The company CEO tells the employees and in all interviews, he associates the company success to the investment they make to their employees (Kim et al., 2012, p. 11). They see employees as the priority and satisfying they're intrinsic, and extrinsic needs allow them to feel motivated and love their job. Doing something that an individual enjoys allows one to be perfect and delivering the best. The behavior of the Green Apron is like a slogan to the company works that means the five ways of being. They bring out the behavior of employees as being genuine, knowledgeable, welcoming, involved and considerate.
A checklist to assess the behavior of different employees is incorporated in this essay to test employee loyalty to their job and the trust they have about the company. It helps in ensuring the work I have written is valid and up standards.
CHECKLIST
Is the topic that I have chosen broad enough to contribute to the needed word count and the required answers to the asked questions?
Is my title or topic engaging and good enough to cover the asked question?
Can the subject approach the questions in the most suitable manner?
Is there a good flow of ideas from one paragraph to the other?
Is the introductory paragraph giving a clue of the directions that the paper would take?
Does the final paragraph, which is the conclusion, give a summary of the ideas discussed in this paper?
The use of literature from other sources well cited with a format that the paper requires me to use?
Have the sources of information in the reference section cited in the work?
Is there any direct quotation used in my work? Is the source recognized?
The behavior of employees in the company is influenced by the relationships that exist between different stakeholders. The company employees feel appreciated by the working condition that the business has created. They value their work and never willing to leave their job. The management is committed to developing and maintaining an environment where understanding and teamwork is the spirit. They achieve the company objective through equal treatment of all stakeholders. They value listening to complaints and communicating any information to employees. Performance measurement on a regular basis and rewarding efforts remain critical (Miner 2015, p. 47). Employees behave in the manner they do at Starbucks because of the good relationship that exists between them and management. They are treated as significant assets that facilitate performance and make the company operations efficient. The effect of these behaviors is that significant growth regarding revenues has been the case as time progress.
The employees highly value Starbucks because of the treatment it offers to them. Their behaviors are different from that of other employees in retail business companies like them. Their behavior has changed consumer behavior globally as they have turned out to love consuming coffee from Starbucks. The company remains outstanding as the in addition to the growth the corporation is experiencing, there is very low employee turnover and at the same time increased performance. The management of the enterprise make policies that favor every stakeholder to the company. The guiding principles in the decisions they make are motivation and teamwork. This proves that the firm does not support the classical management principles because the principles support a behavior that is geared towards performance regarding production while ignoring the ideas of employees. Engaging employees when making decisions shows their value hence accelerating performance.
References
Kim, W.S., Oh, K.N., Lee, Y.H. and Cho, K.O., 2012. Marketing strategy for service quality improvement of specialty Starbucks coffee shop: A case study. J Foodservice Manage, 5(1), pp.3-22.
Miner, J.B., 2015. Organizational Behavior 1: Essential Theories of motivation and leadership. Routledge. 9(1), pp.42-63.
Nelson, B., 2013. Motivation Matters, Corporate Meeting & Incentives. Primedia Magazines & Media Inc, pp. 7-11.
Schunk, D.H. and Zimmerman, B.J. eds., 2012. Motivation and self-regulated learning: Theory, research, and applications. Routledge. pp. 89-96.
www.starbucks.com. 2015. Corporate Social Responsibility Fiscal 2014 Annual Report. pp. 1-22. Available at: http://globalassets.starbucks.com/assets/ea2441eb7cf647bb8ce8bb40f75e267e.pdf [Accessed 25 Jun. 2016].
