Major corporations manage budgets, revenues, assets, and liabilities that can reach into the millions and billions of dollars. Typically, there are a handful of people at the top of the organization who are making decisions day to day or on a long-term basis.
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These decisions have the potential to generate or lose enormous amounts of money. Given those high stakes, these individuals are carefully vetted and closely watched by board members, shareholders, and even the media.
But numerous examples have shown that even entry-level employees can make decisions that result in significant monetary losses for their organizations. In this post and two follow-up posts, we’ll cover a couple recent examples.
Starbucks in the News
Even the very mighty can fall—or make major missteps as Starbucks did earlier this year when it made its way into the news in a not-so-good way. In April 2018, a Starbucks employee at a Philadelphia store called the police on two black men sitting in the coffee shop, alleging they were trespassing.
It’s a story most people are probably very familiar with. It sparked days of outrage, a personal apology from Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson, and a nationwide afternoon of sensitivity training for Starbucks employees.
Too Little, Too Late?
It’s obvious what the employee did wrong, but what did Starbucks do wrong here? As noted above, shortly after the incident hit the news cycle, it instituted a highly publicized afternoon of training in response to the situation.
It’s not clear, though, what kind of training employees had before the incident on unconscious bias, stereotyping, etc. In fact, it’s very plausible that the need for this type of training simply didn’t occur to Starbucks, or many other companies, before this incident. It should have.
Face it: Anytime you’re putting entry-level employees in front of customers as brand representatives, you can’t make assumptions about how well they understand the nuances or implications of racially, or otherwise, insensitive behaviors.
That lack of understanding, as Starbucks learned the hard way, can lead to PR nightmares. This observation isn’t intended to be a slight against entry-level workers in any industry. By definition, they often simply don’t have much, if any, experience, education, or training in these areas. They should, and it’s up to their companies to make that happen.
Any employee, no matter his or her level of seniority or responsibility, can create considerable headaches and expense for his or her organization. While it isn’t possible to cover every contingency or completely control human behavior, effective training in predictable areas of potential risk can help companies avoid these types of problems.