Starbucks cites progress in employee scheduling, staffing

Starbucks Corp. said it is making progress in retooling its approach to employee staffing and scheduling — two areas which union workers have been focusing on in their campaign for better working conditions.

In a post on its website, the coffee giant explained that it is staffing its stores with “greater precision” and has made significant progress in ensuring its stores have the correct number of hours each week for employees to provide a great partner and customer experience every day, at every time of day. To help project the number of hours needed for each store for scheduling employees, Starbucks said it relies not only on last year’s sales, but also on sophisticated data that includes historical trends, current trends, planned promotions and types of available product offerings. 

“We can now project the number of transactions we can expect in 15-minute increments, with local leaders equipped to allocate hours against individual store needs and partner preferences,” the company stated in the post.

In what Starbucks described as its “partner-centric model,” scheduling is designed around employees’ preferences in hours and shifts, while meeting the store business needs. Schedules are set three weeks in advance and store leaders are equipped to allocate hours to employees based on both store needs and partner-identified preferences, as well as adjustments for unplanned events.

Starbucks and Workers United are set to  resume bargaining talks this week after a successful two-day session last month, reported CNBC. In internal surveys and in bargaining committee meetings, union-represented employees have consistently ranked “staffing and scheduling” as their highest priority issue, the report said. 

The vast majority of represented employees report frequently working short-staffed, and a simple majority of partners report that they are getting scheduled for fewer hours than they want or need, the CNBC report continued.

In its post, Starbucks said it has clear goal: "For partners to receive the hours they want – with stability and consistency in their schedules – and the resources store leaders need to staff our stores to meet customer demand while delivering an elevated and efficient Starbucks Experience."

Earlier this month, Starbucks reported disappointing revenue and earnings for its second quarter as same-store sales and traffic fell across all its regions.