OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Symbolic Frame Worksheet

Worksheet Objectives:
1. Describe the symbolic frame
2. Apply the symbolic frame to your personal case situation

CONFIDENTIAL

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.

I’m a Store Manager for Starbucks Coffee, and I’m using a situation that has taken over
how we move forward as a partner-led company. Despite being a beloved company over the
past two years Starbucks has been dealing with employees wanting to be represented by a
Union.
In 2021, Buffalo, New York stores joined Workers United of the Service Employees
International Union. According to their website, “We are organizing a union to bring out the
best in all of us. Our organizing committee includes Starbucks partners from across the United
States. Many of us have invested years of our lives at Starbucks, while others have recently
become partners. We all have one thing in common — we want the company to succeed and
our work lives to be the best they can be. (Starbucks Workers United, n.d.)”
Since then over 8,000 workers at over 360 Starbucks stores in at least 40 states in the
United States have voted to unionize, and as of today none have yet enacted a collective
bargaining agreement.

2)Describe how the symbols of the organization influenced the situation.

3) At the support center in Seattle, Wa the iconic siren symbol is at the top of the tower, the
same symbol that is on each hand-crafted beverge made at Starbucks. The siren is
ubiquitous around the globe, and at times can even be considered a status symbol to be
carrying around one of our cups with the green logo and matching green straw. The threads
of green should have been weaved together to create a seamless experience for our support
partner and our retail operations partners, but at the time it was a very divided workforce.

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 Being a leader in our company often relies on servant leadership, and part of that
especially in the retail operations sector is important to participate in store visits. During the
early days of the pandemic leaders were asked to limit contact and exposure to stop the spread,
in case one of them were to become sick when we were monitoring close contact exposure.
This led to less face-to-face time with leaders, something our company has always valued to
create direct partnerships and for the hourly partner's voices to be seen and heard.

The lack of these missing rituals coupled with navigating difficult customers created a
very us versus them mentality between the frontlines and the senior leadership teams. Both
sides of the aisles had a hard time relating to one another or finding empathy and understanding
for varying perspectives. We had strayed so far from the company we were that in 2021 our
founder, Howard Schultz came back once again to take the reins as Chief Executive Officer and
revive the culture he had created. One where partners felt valued and taken care of by their
employers.

4)Recommend how you would use organizational symbols for an alternative course of action
regarding your case.

My recommendations for using organizational symbols would be to lean into employee

care. I would go back to the roots of what made Starbucks so special, the human connection. I
would have found a way to bring some of our rituals to life in virtual sessions through partner
networks, or listening sessions. One thing they did a good job of was, making sure benefits
stayed up to date adding additional partner food and beverage benefits daily even if they didn’t
have a scheduled shift, and they paid employees any time they had to isolate for the two weeks
if they were exposed to the virus.

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

Knowing what I do now about the importance of company culture I would have created
centralized partner care teams by region to help navigate the pressures of reporting, prioritizing
local mandates, and helping to track and self-declare all the things the health department
needed to know. This would have taken the pressure off our middle managers and allowed
them to be more flexible to other growing concerns the partners had. I think everyone during
this time was feeling burnout, and this would have helped to diminish these feelings and
sentiments of resentment.

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 Reference

Starbucks Workers United. (n.d.). Starbucks Workers United. https://sbworkersunited.org/