TATA Starbucks Proudly Announces Their Hassle-Free Cushionning Initaves For Its Women Employees
Tata Starbucks has been at the forefront of providing opportunities for women and promoting equity, inclusion and diversity in India.
They have achieved 100 per cent pay equity for women and men in 2019, which demonstrates its commitment to gender equality globally. Further, there is no stopping for the brand as now they have also pledged to achieve 40 percent gender diversity by the end of 2022. In order to provide a detailed insight into other such celebratory women-centric initiatives, Navin Gurnaney, CEO, Tata Starbucks decided to mingling for a candid conversation with BW Journalists, where he has discussed many new initiatives and other women partners focused programs.
1) Tata Starbucks is always known to uplift women through their various programmes. Can you highlight some of the recent initiatives for women partners(employees)?
We strongly support Gender Inclusivity and Diversity at workplace and our women partners (employees) make up for 31 percent of Tata Starbucks workforce, a key gender diversity milestone towards our goal to achieve 40 percent gender diversity by 2022. In addition, we also achieved 100 percent pay equity for women and men, a landmark accomplishment that demonstrates Starbucks commitment to gender equality globally.
By investing in our partners and fostering diversity across our organization, Tata Starbucks is able to reflect the demographics of the communities we serve across India. Diversity and inclusion are an integral part of our business and that makes us a better as an organization.
With corporates giving more flexibility to employees in general, things are changing for the better. Work from policies, flexible hours, increase in maternity and paternity leaves, childcare facilities in workplace,etc are encouraging women to take on more responsibilities and walk up the corporate ladder.
At Starbucks, we have proved ourselves to be one of the few places for women to work where they get a chance to enhance their skills in a comfortable and positive environment. Whether it is encouraging hiring ‘second-career’ women or women in stores, female partners are appreciated and supported in every way possible.
The company continues to create opportunities for female partners through an ongoing series of initiatives focused on an inclusive and diverse workforce to drive business growth.
2) How successful has been the All Women Stores in India? How many store are currently open and what is the outlook on them?
Tata Starbucks has always been committed to upholding a culture where diversity is valued and respected. In a market that has concerns around women representation in workforce, we are happy to say that our All Women stores now act as a medium to challenge these myths.
With a total of 5 such women operating stores in Mumbai & New Delhi, this initiative empowers female partners in a new and meaningful way and instils pride as they deliver the Starbucks experience in their Green aprons. The stores further aim to unlock the potential to hire more women, and challenge stereotypes around women’s capabilities in leading café/ restaurants.
3) What is Starbucks Brew of Balance initiative about?
Tata Starbucks diversity initiatives in India, Brew of Balance has over the years created opportunities for women returning to the workforce from a career break. The company also encourages hiring ‘second-career’ women through the Tata Second Careers, Inspiring Possibilities (SCIP) platform. To encourage references for such talent internally, Starbucks offers an enhanced bonus for their references.
Starbucks is a pioneer in introducing women focussed programs including flexible employment options, a 5-day work schedule, access to Women’s Impact Network, extended maternity and sabbatical leave, as well as mentoring and accelerated development programs for key talent.
4) How has COVID impacted partners at Tata Starbucks. Did you introduce any special programs for their upliftment?
When the pandemic occurred, we remained positive and committed to serve our customers with the best experience for which we are known for. COVID-19 gave us as a chance to re-align and re-assess priorities and to reinstate the consumer faith in the brand and its offering. During the lockdown we have had extensive training sessions especially for our store partners (employees) through a blend of virtual classroom training, self-paced learning. The current pandemic didn’t affect our learning journey. Our lockdown period was quite productively utilized by our partners (employees) for this purpose.
We also extended support to our partners through Starbucks emergency relief fund to provide financial assistance to partners and initated other programmes like Corona Kavach - medical insurance, COVID-19 Care – MediBuddy, Two-wheeler mobility programme, Work from home initiatives like Silent Hours to name a few.
5) In what ways has Tata Starbucks given back to the community? Please highlight any recent initiatives.
Apart from female partners, Tata Starbucks also believes in addressing the issue of girl child education. Recently, Tata Starbucks collaborated with non-profit organizations, Educate Girls, to improve girls’ education in rural and underprivileged areas and VIDYA India, to provide volunteering and educational support to girls and young women from underserved communities in urban cities.
As part of Tata Starbucks ongoing commitment to creating equal opportunities, the program will provide girls and young women with the education, financial assistance and community support they need to develop their skills and find careers.
Tata Starbucks believes that it is important for organizations like them to not only bring girls back to school, but also to help in providing better quality of education. Educating a generation can definitely change the next one. In this partnership with Educate Girls, each of Tata Starbucks’ existing stores and the ones that will open in future, would be supporting a girl’s education, and shall be responsible to sustain her education and development.
Tata Starbucks plan to take significant steps to improve the developmental life cycle of a girl and impact the lives of more than 4000 girls and women.
6) According to you, how the future of work and workplace looks like?
With shifiting paradigms in the new normal, the future of workplace will move towards renewed focus on safety and hygiene. The success of an organisation will be determined by how safe, mentally and physically, the employees and customers feel about the organisation.
Transparency and support to employees for crisis preparedness will be essential. Companies should be proactive in creating greater transparency in communications and new systems, and policies and reinterpreting their corporate culture around digital in the workplace. Organisations will also need to place greater emphasis on nurturing and developing their people, creating interesting and purposeful work, and building an environment with career flexibility and tools that enable employees to collaborate and exchange ideas transparently.
