rom volunteering to vocation: How

Starbucks is helping young people become

employable 08/12/2014
Category:

Leadership articles

Mary Appleton caught up with Lisa Robbins, UK HR director at Starbucks, to find out how the
global coffee chain is helping young people across the country become employable, gain
confidence and be open-minded about careers in hospitality and retail.

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Starbucks' employee drive

Engaging with young people
Encouraging employment through volunteering
Partnering in local communities
Influencing the influencers
Celebrating apprenticeships
Global work experience
Making change

Starbucks' employee drive

To be yourself at work and have the confidence to do so is an ambition that Lisa Robbins, UK
HR director at Starbucks, wants all the coffee giants employees to embody. As part of its agenda

to drive a spirit of inclusivity, the organisation refers to staff members as partners, while
recruiting for attitude and training for skill are at the top of its agenda.
Having been in the role for just over a year, part of Robbins mission is to help Starbucks
become the coffee industrys employer of choice, a goal that she admits is ambitious. Steps so far
have included plugging the future talent pipeline with service driven talent, changing the last
resort perception of careers in retail, and becoming actively involved in community schemes to
enhance the employability of young people.
We [businesses] need to work harder on raising awareness about the careers available within
our sectors and the different pathways into work, she says.

Engaging with young people

Starbucks has around 750 stores nationally, while half of its 7,500 employees are under 25 years
of age. Our business is based on young people, so we have a real duty to help prepare them for
work, says Robbins.
While she acknowledges that Starbucks is perceived as a cool brand that attracts a lot of
applicants, she is keen to emphasise the responsibility, as she sees it, of large employers to
encourage young people to consider different types of careers. She believes they must help
candidates gain the kinds of skills that are applicable for roles in these areas. Its not OK just to
be complacent because were an attractive brand, she says. We need to do more and so does
the rest of business.
Robbins passion is profound and shes deeply frustrated by what she describes as the chickenand-egg scenario where if young people do not have any skills or experience, they are
unlikely to get a foot in the door with employers. Part of her objective is to think outside the
box and drive several initiatives to help young people enhance their employability.

Encouraging employment through volunteering

For the past year, Starbucks has been working closely with the London-based volunteering
programme Headstart.
The scheme encourages 16- and 17-year-olds to become active in their community doing
something they enjoy, while giving them the skills to succeed in the workplace.
Participants undertake 16 hours of volunteer work, then join an employability workshop to learn
how their new skills can be articulated in a job interview. This leads to a guaranteed interview
with Starbucks or fashion retailer New Look.
If they are successful we can offer them a job but this is not the driver, insists Robbins. We
want to help young people get interview experience and tangible feedback, so they are clear
about how to sell themselves wherever they choose to work.

We want to hire people who are enthusiastic, who think for themselves, who can work as a team
and who have confidence, she says. Volunteering can help people develop those skills which
are valuable to any workplace. She argues that employers should look beyond traditional
assessment methods. On-thej-ob trials, for example, give candidates the opportunity to see what
life as a barista is really like, while allowing Starbucks to assess candidates attitudes and
motivations.
In June of this year, Lord Young released the report Enterprise for All, which aims to link the
relevance of enterprise in education. Young advocates the introduction of a new Enterprise
Passport a digital record of all extra-curricular and enterprise-related activities that students
participate in during education representing a differentiator for employers seeking proven
employability skills.
Of those that complete the volunteering and employability workshops, four out of five are hired
by Starbucks. Since only one in five interviewees for the company are ordinarily successful,
Robbins believes this is a win-win situation for both the organisation and young people
themselves. Its helping young people be more equipped to be successful and to be confident
about their experience, she explains.
On the back of this success, Starbucks has guaranteed 50 jobs in the next tranche. It didnt take
long to realise the benefit. We want to do more, she says. Although currently limited to London,
Robbins is also keen to replicate this model elsewhere. I would love to see this expand, she
says. We should absolutely use our scale for greater good.

Partnering in local communities

One such community partnership is currently piloting in London, where Starbucks works closely
with Westminster College to help those already in education enhance their employability skills.
Experienced partners from the local districts from store managers to district managers offer
mentoring guidance to students.
We want to help students understand how to develop their skills for interview. Experienced
leaders from the company meet students who have had no exposure to the world of work to help
them understand it, explains Robbins.
Although just three months in, she is confident about the schemes success and hopes to replicate
it in other areas of the UK. Feedback from the young people has been phenomenal, she
enthuses. They feel more equipped to go out into the world of work or make a different career
choice.
As well as community partnerships, Starbucks runs its own Youth Action Programme, in
collaboration with charity UK Youth. This investment programme gives seed funding, training
and backing to young people running projects in their communities across the UK.
This year, Starbucks has provided over 300,000 in funding to support an estimated 150
community projects across Britain.

Robbins adds: We have linked with the National Citizenship Service this year and expanded the
programme to reach more than 10,000 under-25s. This means NCS graduates have the
opportunity to build on their community project or to start a new one, supported by 2,000
seedcorn funding.

Influencing the influencers

Underpinning Robbins commitment to this whole agenda is a vehement belief that those with
influence particularly parents and teachers must be educated in the realities of career paths so
they can have more informed conversations with young people. She is particularly concerned
about old-fashioned perceptions of the retail and hospitality sector, which she argues can be
hugely damaging to young peoples career aspirations.
People think: Starbucks is OK as a holiday job but you wouldnt want to make a career out of
working there. I want to change that, she says.
Starbucks career paths allow people to progress quickly if they are capable and have the right
attitude, Robbins believes. She is keen to point out that neither background nor qualifications are
limiting factors: Anyone can become a supervisor or manager.
She is adamant that the organisations route to work is about opportunity for all, with interviews
for in-store positions based on attitude and service capability. Robbins is sceptical about
introducing an in-store graduate scheme as she feels this might become a barrier to some people
applying.
Unless you have the right attitude and values, you wont succeed, regardless of how
experienced you are technically, she says.

Celebrating apprenticeships
While more businesses are investing heavily in their future talent through offering traineeships
and apprenticeships, Robbins believes that perceptions of vocational qualifications as the easy
option still prevail.
Starbucks introduced apprenticeships in 2012 and will have 1,000 in place by the end of this year
across the UK. We now offer Levels 2 and 3 in hospitality and service, which is equivalent to
five GCSEs at grades A*-C (Level 2) and two A levels (Level 3), says Robbins. Im now
seeing our first apprentices being promoted to store managers.
She recalls a previous graduation which, like any event within Starbucks, was opened with a
coffee-tasting workshop, this time led by an apprentice.
The young lady got up and delivered the session with such passion and conviction, says
Robbins. Her parents approached me afterwards and said: We cant thank you enough for
giving our daughter a chance. We thought she would never be employable as she had no

confidence, but to see her standing there because of the experience you have given her is
amazing.
Stories like this show we are making a big difference to young people. That girl could have
ended up as a NEET [not in education, employment or training] statistic, and once youre there,
its so difficult to get out. Were also changing perceptions this shows the responsibility we
have as an employer to help people make informed choices.

Global work experience

Next, Robbins is looking to introduce work experience opportunities. Meanwhile, she reveals
that the coffee giant is offering a unique six-week placement for the son of one of the companys
coffee farmers from Rwanda. He will spend time in stores, with a district manager and in its
support centre. Robbins is hugely excited by the initiative and hopes this will provide the
impetus to introduce work experience more locally.
His father contacted us and asked if he could come and learn more about the coffee industry,
she explains. He sees first-hand how the beans are grown and harvested, but beyond that its all
rather unknown.
If we put process before judgement, we might say, this isnt possible, we dont do work
experience. But its a great opportunity to strengthen the partnerships we have with young
people across the world.

Making change
While Robbins acknowledges the slow realisation among employers that businesses have to be
more accountable for skills in the younger population, she argues that much more needs to be
done.
There are lots of organisations that are active in their local communities but its not enough,
she says, expressing concern that the recent uplift in the labour market could propel businesses
into a state of complacency when it comes to hiring young people.
So what is her message to other business leaders on this agenda? You cant afford not to get
involved, she argues. Youngpeople are our future workforce. You cant just rely on traditional
routes into employment. Peoples lifestyle changes are shaping their choices about employment
and if we dont help early on, the situation will just get worse.
The impact I have seen in Starbucks is amazing I wouldnt have thought it was possible.
Helping young people get into these jobs and seeing them progress is incredibly rewarding.