OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Human Resource Frame Worksheet

Worksheet Objectives:

1. Describe the human resource frame

2. Apply the human resource frame to your personal case situation

Complete the following making sure to support your ideas and cite from the textbook and other course materials per APA
guidelines. After the peer review, you have a chance to update this and format for your Electronic Portfolio due in Module 6.

1. Briefly restate your situation from Module 1 and your role.

The situation that I chose was my experience as a store manager for Starbucks and working through a pandemic. Starbucks fell under the
umbrella of essential workers at the peak of the pandemic. Our operations were at the point of cafe stores in our area all being closed and only
drive thru locations open for drive thru only. At this time partners had lots of concerns and fears around COVID and being at risk. Starbucks
decided to roll out an option for all partners, they could choose to either stay home and continue being paid their average weekly hours worked,
or they could continue to work, and eventually were given an increase hourly for this duration. Most partners decided to stay home due to being
high risk or having a high risk family member. Quickly my staff 22 was diminished to 8. We maintained operations and kept the business open at
limited capacity. There were numerous challenges present over the course of a few months, from the constant changing protocols for health and
safety, to changes in operations and modifications the business. The pressures of maintaining composure, while balancing the health and well
being of my partners and their families, ensuring we were keeping safe and keeping up on sanitization practices, to making sure we are providing
the best possible product and service to the community who relied on Starbucks.

From a human resources standpoint I look at this situation from the standpoint of Starbucks doing everything they could to ensure employees
were protected, informed, and had a voice and a choice in the matter. Looking back at the book I would link this to Starbucks empowering its
employees. The book states “Empowerment includes keeping employees informed, but it doesn’t stop there. It also involves encouraging
autonomy and participation, redesigning work, fostering teams, promoting egalitarianism, and infusing work with meaning (p.145).” By giving
partners a vision on why we were there, who we impacted as essential workers, the numerous nurses, doctors, police officers, paramedics and so
on that relied on us being open for them when not much else was. We were providing a essential service to our direct communities. From a
human resources stand point Starbucks wanted all workers to have an option and if they could not or chose to not work they would still
compensate them because it was the right thing to do, to take care of your employees. Starbucks at the time was the only company offering to pay
people and their health insurance to stay home and be safe if they chose so. Although because of this it influenced the issues, the stress, and the
understaffed stores. We we extremely busy, we were averaging the same amount of sales by hour but with a third of the staffing. The 8 of us that
were there became so close, it was such an experience and we showed up day after day for one another. I was able to keep the team motivated and
uplifted to make it through September. There was frustration due to upper management constantly rolling out new regulations day after day, new
protocols put into place. Meanwhile a lot of upper management was home while putting pressure on stores to continue focusing on minor
standards when I was just trying to get people to show up.

2. Recommend how you would use the human resources for an alternative course of action regarding your case.

Looking at this case from human resources aspect, I think I would recommend that I would use open book management. With
this approach executives could have reached a level of true understanding and have made more decisions with empathy around
those working. Management should have and the book said “created a powerful incentive”, they made a powerful incentive for
people to stay home but how about for the managers? Stores that were closed and those managers were not working were getting
the same percentage of Q2 bonuses as managers that were in their store every day. By using open book management, upper level
executives could have communicated clearly the vision that they had as well as created some buy in and an incentive for those
who stayed through it all.

Another recommendation I would have would to have been redesigning the work. Regional and district managers should have
evaluated each district and closed stores that had less of a positive impact on revenue, consolidating those employees to support
busier less staffed locations. Instead of redesigning tasks or routines, or changing to robots as discussed in the text, Starbucks
should have redesigned how they operated even more, at one point it started to feel as if it was profits over people. Redesigning
the work by location could have reduced a lot of issues over those months from march until September.

3. Reflect on what you would do or not do differently given what you have learned about this frame.

I would have recommended that from an HR standpoint, there should have been more done to support the partners that are in the
field. Taking care of partners who wanted to stay home is great but they needed to do more for partners who were still showing
up. What is the incentive to keep coming to work if I can paid the same thing to stay home. Starbucks eventually implemented an
extra 3 dollars to their hourly wages as hazard pay. In my opinion that still was not enough. They should have evaluated even
further stores that were not bringing in sales revenue or that only had a handful of people who wanted to work, they should have
consolidated some stores to support more integral locations for the brand. Additionally I do not think they took care of managers
nearly enough. The stress I went through everyday, making sure I showed up day after day with empathy for all of my partners.
How many of them I sat with in the backroom while they cried because of stress, or from fear for themselves or their families to
get COVID. Meeting after meeting with executives, changing procedures, implementing on the fly and training and teaching
partners new routines. They should have given their managers a larger bonus or awarded us bean stock, which is shares of
Starbucks.